The company, which plans to launch soon in the U.S., has created a way for people to easily give gift cards to their friends through social channels such as Facebook.

Greylock will contribute $5 million to the company’s first round, increasing the total to $10.5 million. Creandum — along with Atomico, which was founded by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström — invested in the round last year.

“The gift card industry has grown to a $100 billion industry, and yet very little innovation has been done around social networks and smartphones,” Hoffman said in an interview. “You put those two things together and suddenly you get a much easier way to give.”

The funding will be used to launch the service in the U.S. and the U.K. this quarter, with other markets following.

The social gifting service has three components:

First, people can learn about their friends’ birthdays or other occasions on Facebook, or through notifications on their mobile phones.

Second, users will be able to give friends gift cards that mutual friends or family members will be able to contribute to on Facebook.

Third, Wrapp is partnering with retailers and merchants which will also contribute $5 or $10 to the card.

The logic is that if many people are willing to contribute to a gift card, the gift becomes more meaningful. Retailers are willing to participate because it might drive traffic to the stores and get consumers to buy something that they normally may not have bought.

Wrapp was started 2011 by Hjalmar Winbladh and others, including Andreas Ehn, Spotify’s founding CTO, and Carl Fritjofsson, an advisor to Groupon.se.

Wrapp is currently growing more than 30 percent every week in Sweden, where it is working with more than 25 merchants. Already, 2 percent of the nine million residents there are considered active users of the service.

“It’s certainly showing a great early curve in Sweden, and we have every expectation the curve will be replicated in other places, like the U.S.,” Hoffman said.

We confirmed his resignation with a spokesperson, but it was first reported by Geekwire’s John Cook this morning.

The spokesperson did not provide a reason for Durchslag’s departure, adding that the role would now be filled by Expedia’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi.

Before Durchslag’s 14-month stint at Expedia, he was the COO at Skype and a corporate VP at Motorola. As seen in the photo on the right, Durchslag attended the  D conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., last June to announce a travel partnership with Groupon before Groupon’s CEO Andrew Mason was interviewed on stage.

Expedia’s stock was trading down about 1 percent, or 40 cents, today to $28.91 a share.

Dean, who was a victim of a Tony Bates housecleaning last summer, says several months on the beach eased the sting of his ouster. After considering CEO positions at some early-stage companies, and looking around in the mobile, social and messaging areas, Dean said he decided that the role at Urban Airship — which specializes in managing push notifications for mobile services — fits well with his background in messaging and communications.

Urban Airship is coming off a $15 million funding round that included investments from Salesforce.com, Intel and Verizon. Urban Airship also recently scooped up Jay Adelson’s SimpleGeo.

“They have a massive opportunity to drive messaging in the mobile world generally, and specifically around push,” Dean said in an interview on Thursday.

Moreover, Dean said he is excited about his new role, which includes responsibility for sales, in addition to his usual arena of business development.

As for Skype, he says he wishes the service well and hopes it will stay true to its cross-platform roots, even as it lands in the hands of Microsoft.

At $8.5 billion, Dean says Microsoft “paid a full price,” but that Redmond can still have gotten a good deal if it is able to integrate the service into its various properties, ranging from Windows Phone and Windows Live to Lync and even Xbox.

“I’ve always said I think the acquisition is a very strong and good one for Microsoft,” Dean said. “I can absolutely see why they did that.”

Julie Bort of Business Insider got a Cisco spokesman to confirm it.

A little more than a year old, Umi was Cisco’s attempt to get consumers using their TVs for home videoconferencing. At $600, it was expensive, unwieldy, and ran up against the fundamental problem that consumers really don’t want to talk to each other from their living rooms in high definition. Also: Skype is pretty good, and it’s free, and there are other ways to videoconference without dropping big bucks.

Anyway, due credit goes to Cisco for trying. At least this time it chose to kill the product quietly, unlike the PR blowback it got when it killed its Flip videocamera last year. And Umi is not so popular a product that there will be a similar hue and cry this time around.

Also? No more awkward Cisco TV ads starring Ellen Page. Here’s one she did for the Umi:

Daily deal industry tracking firm Yipit reports that the daily deal industry in North America experienced marginal growth in November, as the major sites were adversely affected by the Thanksgiving holiday.

The number of deals offered increased only 1 percent while total industry gross billings grew by 2 percent during the month.

The largest provider, Groupon, saw the biggest decline.

Groupon grew 6 percent in November, but experienced a double-digit decline during the Thanksgiving holiday week.

Yipit bases its estimates on the sales of vouchers, which it tracks closely. Although Groupon no longer reveals exact sales data on its site, Yipit maintains that it is still able to make fair predictions based on historical data and industry insights.

The daily-deal declines were in stark contrast to the Black Friday experience of online retailers, which saw sales increase to $816 million on the day after Thanksgiving. ComScore said it was the heaviest online spending day to date in 2011, representing a 26 percent increase over the same day in 2010.

The holiday declines occurred despite ambitious programs by both Groupon and LivingSocial, which tried to take advantage of the heavy retail season.

Groupon stepped up its marketing efforts through “Grouponicus,” a holiday shop selling local gifts, deals and travel getaways.

LivingSocial’s Black Friday efforts included offering deals for 20 national brands, including gift cards from Electronic Arts, OfficeMax, Verizon Wireless, Skype and BlueNile.com. LivingSocial even launched a national TV campaign and radio spots to promote the deals.

But Yipit says those efforts didn’t pay off.

For the seven-day period ended Nov. 28, LivingSocial’s gross billings were down 30 percent and 19 percent compared to the two previous periods. And, because of the lower-priced national deals, the average size of its deal price fell to $28 in November from $32 a month earlier.

Yipit did not try to explain why the drops occurred around the holidays, except that they are similar to other periods, such as the Fourth of July.

But the patterns could be compared to social gaming space, which saw its usage sink during the holidays because people were not at work.

A secondary factor may be that more traditional retailers are known for Black Friday offers for others, while daily deals have historically been looked at as items you buy for yourself, and are not necessarily thought of as gifts.

Finally, Yipit said following Groupon and LivingSocial, Travelzoo, AmazonLocal and Google Offers ranked as the third, fourth and fifth largest national providers in November.

No word yet on how daily deals performed in the lead-up to Christmas in December.

As bidders ready their offers for all or parts of Yahoo this week, a lot of the eyes for one of the more aggressive ones will likely be on well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur and powerful VC Marc Andreessen.

That’s because he’s deciding whether or not to play a significant role — as a key board member and even possibly as chairman — in an effort by private equity firm Silver Lake to buy part of the troubled Internet giant and attempt a dramatic reversal of its waning fortunes.

Andreessen, who now runs the Andreessen Horowitz venture firm with Ben Horowitz, has visited Yahoo execs, as I reported last week, part of a weighing of whether to deeply enmesh himself in turning around the iconic Web property.

He has been, as was also reported several months ago, allied with Silver Lake on a Yahoo effort since September and worked with the firm on its purchase and then sale of Internet communications service Skype.

For Andreessen — who serves on the board of Hewlett-Packard and has a lot on his plate running a major venture firm with investments at key companies throughout the tech sector — the decision to join with Silver Lake is a tough one, given that the possibility of failure is not unheard of.

“The question is whether Yahoo can be a growth company again,” said one person close to the situation. “And that is still unclear.”

In meetings with Yahoo execs, several sources noted that Andreessen was unusually blunt about the problems Yahoo faces and its mistakes in the past. They noted as well his reticence over the amount of work required to make a difference.

“He seemed very negative on the idea of whether anyone had what it took to turn it around,” said one exec.

Another factor: Possible friction with Yahoo co-founder and Andreessen friend Jerry Yang. The pair have discussed the issue on friendly terms. “Marc would not do this without Jerry being okay with it,” said one source.

That’s because observers expect the entrance of the Netscape co-founder — who has enormous clout with engineering talent across Silicon Valley, which Yahoo dearly needs — to overshadow and even minimize Yang’s involvement.

One thing is clear: Major shareholders, who are wary of any deal that would keep the current regime in place at Yahoo, told me in multiple interviews last week that the only way they would accept a partial investment by a private equity firm — called a PIPE — would be if there was new leadership in any deal.

And the first name mentioned by almost every Yahoo investor as a key get? Marc Andreessen.

Andreessen declined to comment on any of the 53 emails I sent him asking to.

Emboldened by its success earlier this year with the $8.5 billion sale of Skype to Microsoft Corp., the technology-focused firm is hoping to orchestrate a deal to buy all or part of Yahoo, right the struggling Internet company and reap a rich return in the process.

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My iPhone 4S gets much worse battery life than my iPhone 4 did. I need to charge it by midafternoon, whereas the prior model easily lasted all day. Do you know why and what can be done about it?

A:

Apple says it has found some bugs in its new iPhone and iPad operating system, called iOS 5, which adversely affect battery life for some users. It is promising to release a new version that addresses the problem in a few weeks.

I have heard from several users of the new iPhone 4S and from others who upgraded their older models to the new operating system that their battery lives have degraded.

However, in my own tests and experience, I have seen no reduction in battery life on my upgraded iPhone 4, which still comfortably lasts a full day. And the iPhone 4S Apple lent me for testing also made it through a whole day, every day.

If you can’t wait for Apple’s fix, some websites have reported major improvements by changing a simple setting. You go to Location Services, then System Services, and turn off “Setting Time Zone.” I haven’t tested this and don’t know if it works.

Q:

What is the cheapest device you would recommend to be able to do Skype or any other way of doing video chat?

A:

I’d consider the $199 iPod Touch, which has a front camera, can run several different video chat apps, and requires no monthly cellular service payments.

Another option would be the least expensive Windows laptop or netbook with a built-in webcam. You could also do this with a smartphone, but then you’d likely be paying a monthly bill. Another option is a tablet capable of video chatting, but most cost more than $199.

Q:

How do I sync my new Android phone with my Mac?

A:

Android is generally designed to sync things like contacts and calendar items with online services, especially Google’s, but not with local data on either PCs or Macs.

I have generally found in testing Android phones that you can drag over large files like songs and photos from a Mac by just plugging in the phone via a USB cable and dragging over the files manually.

However, there’s a $40 program called The Missing Sync for Android that claims to facilitate syncing Android phones with both PCs and Macs. I haven’t tested it.

Score one for Yahoo, it seems, getting some key private equity firms to sign its restrictive non-disclosure agreement to allow them a special peek at its business.

And now that includes Silver Lake, which has already had several discussions with Yahoo management and its board members, including co-founder Jerry Yang.

Silver Lake, which has perhaps been among the more aggressive of the possible bidders for Yahoo, had been a significant holdout over the NDA, because of provisions it felt were too onerous.

That included restricting “cross-talk” among the variety of suitors interested. Sources said Silver Lake had been discussing various scenarios related to Yahoo that might take a consortium of players to realize.

It seems it will agree to none of that, for now at least, joining several others who have also signed on the dotted line of secrecy. While Yahoo could have agreed to changes in the NDA, sources said the one Silver Lake agreed to was the same as others previously signed.

Those NDA-ready PE firms include TPG Capital and KKR. As of today, other bidders — such as Providence Equity Partners, Bain Capital, Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman — have not yet signed the document.

Yahoo had extended a deadline for doing to into this week, but firms can also get involved in later rounds of talks.

In addition, signing the NDA is not the end of the road for those who do not — Yahoo is a prominent public company and there are plenty of sources to talk to about its prospects.

But getting cooperation of Yahoo management could be critical, unless a bidder is contemplating making an unsolicited offer.

And that would be a tough road — just ask Microsoft.

Most of all, getting everyone to sign is important for Yahoo, which wants to control any sales or investment process and wants to avoid bidders taking control of its fate.

Thus, Silver Lake accepting the NDA is a big deal, since it had been considering hooking up with China’s Alibaba Group in a possible bid for all or part of Yahoo.

In addition, it has had success in a smaller but similar scenario around Internet telephony giant Skype, which it eventually sold to Microsoft for a lucrative upside.

As with Skype, Silver Lake is still working with Andreessen Horowitz, as I had previously reported. In fact, principal Marc Andreessen was present in a recent informational meeting Silver Lake had with Yahoo’s Yang.

I asked Silver Lake for comment about the NDA, bur it, um, deflected my swooping inquiry (inside joke alert!).

Do sale rumors make a troubled asset more attractive? Yes — except when more rumors (that those sales rumors might not be true) appear.

Welcome to just another day in the life of Yahoo, which saw its shares drop more than 5.5 percent today. Its stock declined almost a dollar to close at $15.64, after it was reported by various news orgs that Yahoo might be leaning toward no sale and a shareholder dividend, and toward taking control of its own sale of its lucrative Asian assets.

That was counter to the news — from a number of the very same outlets — touting a variety of ever more elaborate and sometimes breathless sale scenarios last week, featuring various configurations of Microsoft, Google and private equity firms like Silver Lake and others.

Silver Lake, in fact, appears to be the most aggressive in the possible bidding for all or parts of Yahoo, and has been noodling such a deal most intently, and for a long time now.

It makes sense, given that Silver Lake was successful in a vaguely similar deal that ultimately saved the Internet telephony service Skype, which it eventually peddled at a high price to Microsoft.

In fact, according to several sources, Yahoo director and co-founder Jerry Yang — also a former CEO of the company, who appears to have seized the ball firmly in the strategy game — met with Silver Lake today for an unspecified little chitchat.

That said, one source told me, “what is deeply uncertain is whether Silver Lake will do something at all.”

This is par for the course in this everything-but-the-kitchen-sink drama. Because — although it makes for a boring post, and the back and forth throat-clearing before an actual event might be entertaining — so far, not very much is actually happening as yet at Yahoo, with regard to its variety of options.

Of course, this could change in an hour. Or tomorrow, or the next day. Most of all, it’s clear that Yahoo’s board has to move in some significant way before the end of the year.

So, yes, the Silicon Valley Internet giant is doing all the sales-oriented stuff it should do with its coterie of pricey bankers (presumably being paid by the hour).

Yes, it has recently hired a talent-search firm, which is eyeing the landscape to find a willing CEO. (Even more adviser costs!)

And, yes, it is still wrangling with its Asian partners — Alibaba Group and SoftBank — over how to do a tax-free transaction (you’d think from all the sweating over it that this deal was harder to solve than the European debt crisis).

And, on schedule, activist shareholders — like hedge-fund agitator Dan Loeb of Third Point — should be attacking again soon, until a deal is done.

But according to many sources both inside and outside Yahoo, what’s happening is pretty much business as usual for this Hamlet of a company, which is lugubriously debating and weighing and pondering its fate.

I suppose it should, given the importance of it all, except it is a conundrum that has been going on for far too long at Yahoo, and under a number of different leaders.

In other words, it’s like “As the World Turns,” except with some new characters and a whole lot more amnesia.

But the slowness of a very real process is also causing deep frustration with all those dealing with Yahoo now — including possible bidders, and definitely its Asian partners.

Their gripes — which are louder than in most deals — are not surprising: They refuse to sign a too-onerous NDA to look at Yahoo’s books; there’s an irksome tone of indecision on the part of the company’s board; and, as always, the incessant leaks about all of this and more are making it worse.

One bidder has likened the company to a “melting iceberg that has a lot less time than the planet has to put its house in order.”

Another bemoaned the variety of trial balloons being floated, and noted that no movement was what Yahoo seems to do best.

That’s not exactly true, of course, so expect to see more leaks about plots and plans and meetings.

But no matter what you hear, keep in mind that having Yahoo’s fate being spun about like a top on a daily basis on Wall Street and in the media is not good for the company itself — or for its employees and shareholders.

Since it makes me dizzy — even though I like a good scoop as much as the next reporter — that’s the reason I have largely stuck to reporting about the actual internal turmoil inside Yahoo, from poor employee morale to various staff rejiggerings to more relentless brain drain.

Because while everyone fiddles, Yahoo’s real prospects of maintaining its core business melt a little bit more every day.

Yahoo is on its third CEO in four years, it has lost advertising momentum to Google and Facebook, its engagement levels are dangerously slowing, its social and mobile strategies are unclear and even its powerful email product is under siege.

And in the end, it is only these things that will matter to whoever runs the company in the end.

[Photo from Mat Honan's fantastic tweet here.]

Profits rose 6 percent on a revenue increase of 7 percent, compared to the same period a year earlier.

Microsoft reported a profit of $5.74 billion, or 68 cents a share, compared with $5.4 billion, or 62 cents a share in the first quarter 2010. Revenues totaled $17.37 billion, up from $16.2 billion.

Microsoft met expectations of analysts, who were expecting a profit of 68 cents, and exceeded their revenue expectations of $17.24 billion.

Still, investors may have been looking for more. The company’s stock was down 32 cents or 1.2 percent in after-hours trading, to $26.72 a share.

In a release, the company pointed to particularly strong sales for Office, SharePoint, Exchange and other cloud services such as Office 365 and Windows Azure, but stayed mum on the company’s weaker areas, such as Windows Phone.

I’ll be standing in for our very own Kara Swisher today to liveblog the call at 2:30 pm PT.

To be discussed are some of the more cheery highlights, such as the official close of the Skype acquisition; Xbox’s dominance in outselling every other console for 15 of the past 16 months in the U.S., and how gosh-darn pretty the upcoming Windows 8 home screen is.

And everyone will want to know about the rumors — about Microsoft mulling a bid for Yahoo — that resurfaced again yesterday.

Live coverage of the call will kick off shortly.

2:58 pm: Joining the call after some technical issues. The Q&A is in progress. A question from Citibank: As you look at the OSD, losses are sustainable. How are you thinking about lower losses?

Bill Koefoed, general manager of investor relations: By far the most important thing is to grow the revenue for search up. We have people working closely with Yahoo on that. That is the most leveraged thing we can do for OSD profitability.

A question from Credit Suisse: Focusing on MBD, you’ve been trending. Where do we stand in the adoption cycle of Office 2010?

Koefoed: There’s a few things going on in the enterprise. One is the great traction we get from integration of SharePoint and Exchange and Lync. Good traction. Second is the cloud. When we talk to enterprises about productivity, they want to talk about cloud services. They want to understand where that is leading. That creates an incredibly good conversation. I think obviously that is a long-term phenomenon with a lot of room to grow.

3:04 pm: A question from UBS on the enterprise: Any change in customer behavior? There has been some concern about larger deal sizes.

Koefoed: No changes.

Peter Klein, CFO: We continue to execute well on the annuity side.

Question from Bernstein Research. Asking about hosting. How much do you think Office 365 and SharePoint have gained traction?

Answer: Delivering as a service should have a higher gross profit dollar.

3:07 pm: Question from VGC Financial. Can you update us on the percentage of cash offshore?

Klein: $51 billion is offshore.

A question from Oppenheimer, asking about Xbox Live business: Are there opportunities for additional premium service contracts?

Klein: Without being specific, from a business model there are lots of opportunities to deliver unique and compelling entertainment experiences. That has been the thinking all along.

Koefoed: Xbox Live has been phenomenal in growth, in users and revenue. We’re going to have 70 games out this holiday season. We believe we have the most compelling entertainment experience in the living room.

3:10 pm: Question from CLSA: What are your assumptions for royalties around mobile phones, given the deal with Samsung?

Klein: We haven’t announced any particular details around the deal.

Question from Stifel Nicolaus about business PCs: Where do you think we are in the Windows 7 upgrade cycle?

Klein: Middle innings. Through the fiscal year, at least.

One more question: Wells Fargo asking about what happens to Microsoft’s tie-ups with Yahoo if Yahoo gets acquired.

Klein: We have a great relationship with Yahoo. It’s a long-term relationship, and the teams are super focused on getting things done there.

And that is the end of the conference call.

With the closing of the deal, which was announced back in May, Skype will become a new business unit within Microsoft, with Skype CEO Tony Bates becoming the president of the newly created Skype division. Over time, Microsoft said, it will integrate Skype into a variety of its products.

“By bringing together the best of Microsoft and the best of Skype, we are committed to empowering consumers and businesses around the globe to connect in new ways,” Bates said in a statement. “Together, we will be able to accelerate Skype’s goal to reach 1 billion users daily.”

It’s the latest big acquisition for Skype, which was first acquired by eBay for $2.6 billion back in 2005. The online auction company sold off most of the company to private equity owners for $1.9 billion in 2009. Then, in May, Microsoft came along with its bid, nabbing Skype before a planned IPO.

Although the deal has received required regulatory approval in most markets, Microsoft noted that the deal has not yet been approved in certain markets.

“The acquisition remains under review in a few countries, and will be completed in those countries when such reviews are closed,” Microsoft said.

Of course, the big question now is what Microsoft is able to do with its big buy.

According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo has hired Heidrick & Struggles for its CEO search.

It will be a dicey job, since the effort is on a separate track than the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s wide-ranging strategic review, which is looking at a range of options including the sale of the company.

That’s why many see the move as window-dressing for Yahoo’s board, rather than any real interest in hiring a new leader.

Sources said that will make the search a difficult one for Yahoo, since any CEO candidate would be coming into a very volatile situation. In addition, Yahoo has been struggling — Struggles, struggling, get it? — to recharge its advertising and search business and also its product innovation cycle.

That’s the reason — among several others — that the board of Yahoo suddenly fired its former CEO Carol Bartz last month.

Heidrick has worked for Yahoo previously, in the now ill-conceived placement of Bartz by partner John Thompson. A different partner will be handling this assignment, sources said.

The pool of possible CEOs to lead Yahoo is not a large one, but could includes execs such as Juniper Networks CEO Kevin Johnson, Chegg CEO Dan Rosensweig, Skype CEO Tony Bates, John Pleasants of Disney’s Playdom, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and any number of top Google execs, as well as Yahoo board member and Akamai President David Kenny.

(I am, of course, waiting by the phone for the call.)

A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment.

As expected, the European Commission approved Microsoft’s $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype late last week.

Next, the deal for the popular Internet communications company — which had previously been cleared by U.S. regulators — is likely to officially close later this week (paperwork!), said several sources close to the situation.

Now, of course, comes the hard part — which is whether Microsoft can successfully integrate the more nimble Skype into the belly of the software beast and allow it to thrive.

Some key questions:

How smoothly can Microsoft integrate Skype into its existing products, such as its unified communications platform, Outlook mail and Hotmail, Office, Messenger and Xbox Live? And, perhaps most of all, Windows Phone devices?

That said, will Skype also get to do what it needs for its own success beyond Microsoft? That includes working with mobile rivals Apple and Google, who now dominate the smartphone market, as well as many others. It has already managed to buy GroupMe group messaging start-up for $85 million, just months after its own acquisition in May.

And can the division — which will be led by Tony Bates, Skype’s CEO and now a Microsoft president — operate successfully located mostly away from the power center of Redmond, Wash.? Skype has a substantial office in Silicon Valley, as well as key engineering units in Estonia and Stockholm.

In that vein, will Microsoft be able to hold on to new talent like Bates and Skype’s geek squad, all of whom have substantial choices elsewhere? Like a lot of large tech companies, Microsoft is not known for being able to hold on to those who come in from the outside, in large part due to its insular culture of longtime execs.

In other words, how big a welcome will Microsoft’s other powerful presidents — such as Windows division head Steven Sinofsky — give Bates and company?

“In the area of consumer communications, the investigation found that the parties’ activities mainly overlap for video communications, where Microsoft is active through its Windows Live Messenger,” the commission said in a statement.

“However, the Commission considers that there are no competition concerns in this growing market where numerous players, including Google, are present.”

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Seriously. That’s what Wibe Wagemans, the SVP of brand advertising and analytics of Rovio, said today at Mobile Future Forward in Seattle.

“We are now the fastest-growing consumer brand in history,” said Wagemans, a former Microsoft Bing executive.

It doesn’t hurt that the Finnish company known for the Angry Birds mobile game — which has branched out into everything from stuffed plush toys to educational books and movies — is a marketing powerhouse.

The major growth has been driven not just by tons of consumers being addicted to throwing birds at a bunch of building blocks, but from being on several platforms, including mobile, the Chrome app store and the newly launched Google+ social games.

Today, Wagemans said Chrome has tens of millions of active users a month and that Angry Birds is the top game on Google+ (supposedly beating Zynga, Wooga, Electronic Arts and others). In total, he said, across all platforms, Rovio has 120 million monthly active users playing its games.

All that adds up to more users than other fast-growing global companies within 20 months of launching their brand, he said.

Other companies are still clearly bigger, just not growing as fast, if you trust the company’s methodology and metrics.

Zynga has more than 273 million monthly active users on Facebook alone (not to mention the users it has on Google+ and mobile).

But perhaps that’s just a matter of time.

As Wagemans points out: “We haven’t even launched on Facebook yet.”

One phone is the 4.7-inch Titan — the largest-screen Windows Phone device yet — while the Radar is a 3.8-inch device crafted from a single piece of aluminum.

The Radar has a 1 gigahertz Qualcomm processor and a 5 megapixel rear camera, while the Titan sports a 1.5GHz chip and an 8 megapixel rear camera.

With the announcement, Microsoft VP Joe Belfiore said he can now confirm that Mango supports the additional front-facing camera, something about which Microsoft had been cagey.

“A lot of you have asked us whether Mango will support front-facing cameras — and now that these HTC phones have been formally announced, I can confirm officially that Mango does support these,” Belfiore wrote in a blog post. The post mentions video chat as among the features, but doesn’t specifically mention Skype, which Microsoft is in the process of acquiring.

Fujitsu-Toshiba has already launched a waterproof Windows Phone Mango device in Japan, while Nokia is also basing its first Windows Phone on the Mango software release.

Among the features being added with the update are improved browsing, better multitasking and integrated Twitter support. Microsoft finalized the software update in July.

“Going to China” is a trend we began to see among start-ups early last year, and it has picked up considerable momentum since then. Given the track record of U.S. Internet companies in China — which could at best be described as “mixed” and, at worst, “disastrous” — one might wonder why today’s upstarts believe they’ve got what it takes to be successful in the world’s largest Internet market. China has an estimated 400 million Internet users today, and will have 750 million by 2015, according to a recent McKinsey & Company study.

From our vantage point, it’s not that American entrepreneurs and CEOs suddenly feel they’ve cracked the code on China. Rather, the Chinese market opportunity has become so large, they simply can’t ignore it. The massive potential rewards of “going to China” now outweigh the massive potential risks — especially now that the U.S. market, with all its recent troubles, is no sure bet itself.

The market potential in China is easy to see when you visit the bustling streets of Shanghai or Beijing. As investors in both China and the U.S., we have our own take on why we think China is rapidly becoming a core strategy for every high-growth Internet company today.

• Growth for Fortune 100 companies is coming from China, not the U.S. (or Europe). Case in point: Mercedes sold more S-Class sedans in China last year than in the U.S. and Germany combined. Mercedes sales in China grew 60 percent last year versus nine percent in the rest of the world. Even if you own large-cap U.S. equities in your personal portfolio, mutual funds or 401K, those companies’ main revenue growth is likely coming from China — and economic growth in the U.S. is hardly assured at this point.
• Incomes are rising in China while remaining flat in the U.S. The Chinese middle class numbers in the hundreds of millions (100-300 million, depending on your source), with household income rising an estimated 98 percent since 2004, according to Credit Suisse Group. Even the bottom 20 percent of households saw their incomes rise 50 percent in the same time period. Contrast this with the U.S., where household income growth has stagnated, barely keeping pace with the rate of inflation since 1990. This flat-line income stagnation isn’t likely to change anytime soon, especially in today’s challenging economic climate.
• The Chinese have money, and they’re spending it. Chinese consumers buy an estimated 12 percent of the world’s luxury goods, growing at a 30 percent clip per year, according to Barclays Capital. Spend a day in Shanghai, Beijing or Hong Kong and you’ll be blown away at the breadth of luxury stores in major downtown areas — and the number of shoppers crowding the shops.

So what does this mean for U.S. Internet companies? It means the same thing it does for Mercedes, Apple or P&G — you simply can’t ignore China anymore.

To date, most success stories among U.S. tech companies in China are enterprise or mobile companies in the Fortune 1000 — HP, Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, etc. Each of these companies has built a $1B-plus business in China, but it took them decades to do so, with many speed bumps along the way.

We can’t argue with the dismal results of most U.S. Internet companies thus far in China — first-generation Internet companies like Amazon, eBay, Yahoo and Google have largely failed in China, and newcomers like Facebook and Twitter have been hampered due to strict Chinese government regulations. But we can highlight a few data points that suggest smart U.S. companies can and will attain success in China in the next five to 10 years.

• Demographics. Internet demographics keep getting better in China. Robin Li, founder and CEO of Baidu, spoke at our 10th anniversary event in Shanghai last November. He pointed out that when he launched Baidu in 1999, there were fewer than 30 million Internet users in China, and the total Internet ad market was worth less than $50 million. Today, Baidu sports a $50 billion market cap and Robin is a billionaire. Today there are more than 400 million Internet users in China. Combine this audience size with the rising incomes mentioned above, and you just can’t get a better audience for an Internet company.

• Market share. More than 70 percent of the world’s virtual goods sales in 2010 occurred in the Asia/Pacific region. It’s no wonder why Tencent, which pioneered the virtual goods market now being replicated by Zynga, generates more than $4 billion in annual revenue from gaming and virtual goods, and sports a $45 billion market capitalization. China’s Internet advertising market is growing at an estimated 50 percent or more per year.
• Platform diversity. In the U.S., Facebook is the go-to outlet for social marketing, accounting for more than 80 percent of the market (though it will be interesting to see if Google+ makes a dent in this over the next 12 months). In China, there are social platforms you’ve never heard of that each have hundreds of millions of users. Sina Weibo (think “China’s Twitter”) has more than 140 million users, more than 50 million monthly actives, and is adding more than 10 million new users per month. YY has millions of users, many of whom spend hours per day on the platform. Last year, YY users consumed more Internet voice minutes than Skype. (Disclosure: Our firm, GGV Capital, is an investor in YY.)

In recent months, several U.S. Internet companies have made their move on China. Zynga recently announced a partnership with Tencent to launch its games in China. Earlier in the year, Groupon entered China through an investment into local group-buying site GaoPeng.com. Both of these companies are going after China a mere two to three years after launching in the U.S. — an unheard-of undertaking just a few short years ago.

Our bet is there will be hundreds more U.S. Internet companies talking about China in the boardroom over the next two years. We’d wager more than 90 percent of high-profile American Internet companies will spend a lot of time, money, and energy to enter China — either on their own or via local partnerships. Many will fail to catch on with Chinese consumers. But for the relatively small percentage of companies that succeed, China will bring massively outsized returns. Internet companies that win the hearts and minds of Chinese consumers are the companies to bet on for long-term growth.

Jeff Richards (Menlo Park) and Jenny Lee (Shanghai) are Partners at GGV Capital, a $1 billion venture capital firm investing in the U.S. and China since 2000. Representative GGV investments include Alibaba Group, Pandora Media, YY, Buddy Media, Tudou, SuccessFactors, Square, and 21ViaNet.

At this point — remember, less than 20 years after the ads ran — you’d really have to be a quibbler to argue with any of the forecasts. (Yes, no one Skypes from phone booths, but that’s really because no one uses phone booths, and you can do it from your iPad, anyway.)

If you’re old enough to have a hazy memory of these ads the first time around, the fact that the former future is now present tense might really give you pause. You know, if you were so inclined.

UPDATE: As Richard Raucci notes, the spots were directed by David Fincher, pre “Fight Club” and “The Social Network”. And Terry O’Gara, who worked on the music for the ads, has a fascinating look behind the scenes, with some thought-provoking perspective about sound + vision.

Bonus really, really old video!

Time to Call is an iPhone app that allows users to make 15-minute calls to any of 100 countries for just a buck or two. Another 90 countries can be dialed for up to 15 minutes for under $10. The service is done on a pay-per-call basis with the money deducted from a user’s iTunes account as an in-app purchase.

“It will be the absolute easiest way to buy and make international calls,” Vonage CEO Marc Lefar told AllThingsD. The app works worldwide over Wi-Fi and in the U.S. and Canada over 3G (though data charges may apply for those on tiered plans).

Although perhaps less simple than just using the iPhone’s built-in phone app, savings using Time to Call can be significant, Vonage says. The company says a 15-minute call from the U.S. to Mexico costs $2, as compared to nearly $10 on a typical wireless carrier. When traveling overseas, the savings can be even greater for those who have Wi-Fi access. The company notes that a 15-minute call from Japan to South Korea using Time to Call is just 99 cents as compared to more than $34 when made via a traditional wireless call.

Lefar notes that three in five international calls are still made directly through a wireless or wireline carrier, typically at rates three or four times higher than is necessary.

Of course, Vonage is not just competing with direct-dial calling but also a host of VoIP companies, including Skype, that have been faster to move to the mobile phone.

“Skype, the biggest name that is also in this space, came at it from a PC-to-PC space,” he said. “We’re meeting in the middle at mobile. That’s where the battle will be fought over the next couple of years.”

Vonage plans to launch Time To Call in more than 80 countries simultaneously in the iTunes App Store, part of the company’s effort to expand into regions beyond the United States. Those who download the app will be able to try the service for free, with one free call to any of the 100 countries where 15-minute calls are priced at either 99 cents or $1.99. That, Lefar notes, is the same as the cost of other impulse buys, like a song or TV show.

Lefar said that if the shift to mobile is a marathon, he thinks the industry is only at the quarter-mile mark.

Just last week Vonage introduced another mobile product. That one, dubbed Vonage Extensions, is designed to allow the company’s home-calling customers to make free calls using their mobile phones.

“It’s an extremely important part of our strategy,” Lefar said of the mobile efforts. Vonage, he said, was near bankruptcy back in 2008 and had to refinance its debt in the middle of the financial crisis. Since then, he said, Vonage has managed to turn itself around as a profitable company with substantial cash flow.

“The focus now for the organization is really on growth,” he said.

Just how well Vonage is doing on that front should become clearer later on Wednesday, when the company reports quarterly earnings.

After making a cameo on Wednesday, only to be pulled in the evening, the Skype app for iPad is now back in the iTunes Store, apparently for good this time.

In addition to voice and video calling, the app also supports instant messaging and sending texts, Skype said.

“Not only does Skype for iPad feature an interface that takes advantage of the large screen, but there are a number of additional iPad-optimized features found in this new app,” the company said in a blog post.

Skype has once again posted a YouTube video on how the app works. (The company briefly posted a video to YouTube back in June, but quickly removed it from public view.)

Update: It turns out the version of the iPad app that Skype released on Tuesday was the same one that was posted on Monday and then later pulled. A Skype representative said it was simply a matter of timing. Strange…

“To ensure your best Skype experience, we’ve temporarily removed Skype for iPad which went live prematurely today,” the company said in a posting on its Twitter account. “We know you’ve been eagerly awaiting Skype for iPad and apologize for the inconvenience.”

The program reportedly allowed audio and video calling over both 3G and Wi-Fi networks.

Reached for comment, a Skype spokesperson told AllThingsD that the app will be re-released in short order, but declined further comment.

It’s the latest in a series of miscues for Skype when it comes to its iPad product. In June, the company posted and then pulled a YouTube video touting the forthcoming tablet version.

Skype is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft.

The company announced Vonage Extensions, which allows people to make Vonage calls over their mobile phones, including international calls. The service is free, but only works if you are using Vonage for home phone calls.

“Now new and existing customers can call these unlimited countries on their mobile phones for no additional cost,” Vonage CEO Marc Lefar said in a statement. “This new service dramatically increases the value of Vonage’s core offering, providing customers with more flexibility and savings when making international calls.”

Customers can add any phone number as an “extension” to their Vonage account, and dial an access number and the number they wish to call, much like a calling card. The service works with any mobile phone, but the company also plans to introduce iPhone and Android apps over the coming weeks, which will simplify the process so users can simply dial a number from their contact list without having to enter so many numbers.

With the move, Vonage will also find itself up against a range of competitors, including familiar foes like Skype as well as new mobile-focused competitors such as Viber.

It’s not the first foray into mobile for Vonage. The company released an iPhone app back in 2009, though it only allowed calls over Wi-Fi.