Improved communications, along with better Web browsing and more powerful apps, were the key focal points as the company looked to make the first major update to its revamped phone software.

On Tuesday, the company is announcing a host of new communications options that are among 500 new features that Microsoft is adding to its phone operating system in the “Mango” update due out later this year. The company is outlining the changes and sharing other details at a press event in New York that is just getting underway. (It’s being Webcast and AllThingsD has live coverage here).

As part of its effort to be a better communicator, Microsoft is adding support for Twitter as well as tighter integration with Facebook and an integrated conversation feature that allows chats to move between Facebook Chat, Windows Live Messenger and text message all within a single “thread.” The company is also adding an option to let users combine contacts into various groups that can be reached en masse via email or text message. On the email side, customers will now have the option to combine views from various email accounts into a single inbox as well as view messages in either standard or conversation view.

While apps are important, Microsoft is hoping to convince friends that when it comes to keeping in touch, it is better to integrate multiple modes into a single hub than to have to open a different program for each means of communication.

“Our friends aren’t apps—they are people,” Sullivan said.

That said, even with Mango, users will have to do some switching. The feature that lets discussions move from chat to text message doesn’t extend to email, while Twitter users will still need a separate program to handle more advanced tasks.

Still, Microsoft hopes integrating more options into its People hub will help the company’s products stand out from rivals. Sullivan noted that Microsoft’s research shows people spend 2.5 hours a day socializing on their phone–more time than is spent eating. “It’s pretty dramatic,” he said.

The Mango release of Windows Phone is due to show up on phones later this year. In addition to current hardware partners that are planning new phones, Mango will work on existing Windows Phone devices and will form the basis for Nokia’s first crop of Microsoft-powered phones.

The blessed union led to text messaging volume that was more than six times normal in the United States and the United Kingdom at the start of the wedding. Though it dipped a bit as things went on (and on and on), the messaging rate stayed at more than double normal rates throughout. In all, that made Friday a bigger texting day than Easter or Valentine’s Day.

In fact, Friday was the second biggest text messaging day of the year, behind only New Year’s. Even stateside, where it was the middle of the night, traffic was up 31 percent, according to SAP’s Sybase unit, which compiled all this vital messaging data.

For the record, there is only one message I want to send when there is something going on at two in the morning: “Do not disturb.”

The payments provider is announcing a partnership today with Gap, which has been using Visa’s platform since November to alert customers by text message to discounts on jeans and other marked-down preppy apparel.

The service does not require users to have a smartphone, or to download an application. Conveniently, they also never have to remember to check-in.

Rather, Gap customers, who sign-up for the program called Gap Mobile 4 U, will receive text alerts for offers when they’ve made a purchase on their Visa card in the same zip code as a Gap location.

While the first trial was conducted with Gap, Leigh Amaro, Visa’s senior business leader for the company’s global information products, said it will be expanding to other retailers soon. “We have a strong pipeline with more announcements coming shortly.”

The platform uses Visa’s normal global processing network, which analyzes and processes transactions in real time to ensure that payments are not fraudulent. With a consumer’s permission, Visa can use that information to see where and when the last transaction was made and deliver an offer based on their preferences and the time of day.

Visa cannot send an offer to a consumer unless they’ve made another transaction, or signed up with the retailer to receive them.

In a hypothetical scenario, Amaro said if someone fills up their gas tank early in the morning, a logical offer might be to send you a discounted cup of coffee at a nearby cafe. Or, if you make a purchase at the cafe in the morning, it might send you an offer that would draw you back in the afternoon.

For now, the purchase does not have to be made with your Visa card, but in the future, the discount could be applied afterwards, by crediting your bank statement. “It takes the work away from the retailer, which is important to businesses where you want to get people through the line as fast as possible,” Amaro said.

Other companies are trying to enter the space, including Groupon and LivingSocial, which offer instant deals via mobile applications. Foursquare and Shopkick also provide occasional discounts when a consumer has checked into the store. Visa has an advantage because of its scale and because the technology requires no downloads and very little user engagement.

A Gap spokesperson said they will continue to pilot the program with Visa in addition to exploring other ways to engage with customers on their mobile devices. Also in November, Gap gave away free pairs of jeans to the first 10,000 customers who checked into a store using Facebook Places.

Gap did not disclose how well either campaign performed.

Visa declined to discuss terms of the partnership, but said in addition to a financial arrangement between the two, it was designed to drive more payment volume.

The restoration of communications comes a day after President Hosni Mubarak announced that he would not seek another term as president in the forthcoming September election. Though that seems not to have satisfied the protesters who are eager that he step down right away.

Messages on @Speak2Tweet, the Twitter account created by Google and Twitter, have grown to 1,197 overnight, though with the Internet returning to normal that may stop.

The Internet may be returning to something resembling normal, but it’s clear that Egypt itself has quite a ways to go. I heard again this morning from my friend Abdalla in Cairo via text message. He wrote:

I am close to Tahrir Square. Pro-Mubarak rallies are taking place. They are not huge crowds but many of them are complete thugs. Thank goodness I got out of there with my camera in one piece. I am seeking refuge in a hotel lobby for now. I talked to a video journalist here who had his camera spray painted by someone in the crowd. Today is going to be a really ugly day :(

Mobile messaging is also big, though in most parts of the world young women are far more likely than young men to send text and picture messages. There were some exceptions, such as India, where men were twice as likely as women to send texts and four times more likely to send pictures.

The Nielsen research was conducted in 19 countries, though the report broke out results only for the U.S., UK, India, Italy, Brazil, China, Spain, Russia and Germany. In most countries Nielsen surveyed 5,000 young people, though in the U.S. it surveyed 75,000 youths. In some countries the research was done face-to-face and in others the survey was done online.

In most countries across the globe, young men are more likely than women to have smartphones, though the U.S. is an exception with young women making up 55 percent of smartphone owners between 15 and 24. The adoption of smartphones versus feature phones also varies widely. In India, for example, feature phones outnumber smartphones 9 to 1 among young people, while in Italy smartphone adoption is nearing 50 percent among the younger set.

Advanced data usage was highest in the U.S and China, where about 17 in 20 young people did more than just make calls and send text and picture messages. That type of data use was least common in India, where only 13 percent did so, However, another 51 percent of Indian youths used their phones for text and/or picture messages.

The Nielsen study also looked at other patterns including use of more than one SIM card and whether phones are prepaid or postpaid, although those trends seemed to have more to do with how the country’s cell phone industry is set up as opposed to indicative of trends among youth.

SMS GupShup (a Hindi word that translates to “chitchat” in English) is a 200-person start-up that has created a host of SMS-based services that, all told, account for more than 1.5 billion text messages a month.

The company’s biggest service is a text-message-based social network that lets individuals or companies send text messages to large groups of followers that want the updates. The service has taken off with 100 of the most popular feeds topping 100,000 subscribers to things like jokes, religious messages, sports scores and other information. Smaller groups might have as few as 10 or 20 followers. The service is somewhat similar to GroupMe, a U.S.-based group messaging service.

One tribe based in Northeast India uses the service to allow its 65,000 members–some of whom live far away from the area–to keep tabs on tribal goings-on.

“If someone has a child, someone gets married, someone dies, it all goes up there,” said CEO Beerud Sheth, who recently moved to Bombay after spending many years in Silicon Valley. His past work includes launching Elance, a company that matches freelance talent from around the world with people who need to hire for projects.

SMS GupShup has become a significant player in the text message market in India, accounting for roughly 5 to 10 percent of all SMS traffic, Sheth said.

But, while there is money to be made in text messages, SMS GupShup is not exactly raking it in. Some standard industry metrics on how much a company could make off text messages would suggest that the company is on pace to bring in about $10 million a year in revenue.

“That’s in the right range,” Sheth said.

Nor is the company yet profitable, but Sheth said the company hopes to turn the corner sometime in the first half of next year. Among the company’s costs is buying the bandwidth needed for all of the text messages sent by its users. Although it pays anywhere from a quarter to a tenth of what consumers pay for text messages, that still adds up. Fortunately, India is one of the cheapest places in the world to send text messages, with consumers typically paying anywhere from half a cent to a penny per message and bulk users paying far less.

To help recoup the costs, the company limits message length so that the last little bit of space can be used for sponsorship or advertising.

While SMS GupShup is the largest purely SMS-based service in India, Sheth said he does find himself competing with Facebook and Twitter in India and elsewhere, but said the strength of his service is that it is built around SMS, rather than using text messages only as a basic option for status updates.

“For them, SMS is sort of a stepchild experience,” he said.

Sheth said the company isn’t limiting itself to the social networking service. Among its other products are bulk SMS services for businesses. Companies can use the service for everything from messaging to customers to managing inventory. A text-message-based CRM application is in the works as well.

The company is also working directly with carriers in several countries to create a “reply all” feature that would allow people not only to send bulk text messages, but also to reply to a group of anywhere from 7 to 10 people, depending on the country. That’s particularly useful in small groups that may want to schedule events or do other tasks via text message, Sheth said.

“One way to think about text messaging is it is the Internet in the developing world,” Sheth said. “In this part of the world, that is a big part of how people communicate.”

“We are wandering around and people are asking us questions and we don’t know what’s going on ourselves,” said one very nervous Yahoo ad salesperson this morning, in New York for Advertising Week, the most important gathering of the year for online sales. “There’s a lot of uncertainty from an employee perspective.”

You can say that again.

Today, as news BoomTown broke about the departure of Yahoo’s U.S. head Hilary Schneider and two other key execs at the Internet giant spread, I have been on the receiving end of a spate of emails and calls and text messages from staffers at the Silicon Valley icon searching for information about what’s up at their own company.

That’s because neither the top management of Yahoo (YHOO) nor its typically ineffectual board has communicated to its thousands of employees about exactly what is going on, nor about plans to replace bosses in charge of giant swaths of the business.

Now, for example, Yahoo’s ad sales execs say they don’t know who to report to, since Schneider is headed out and no one person replaced U.S. ad sales leader Joanne Bradford in Yahoo’s key moneymaking market after she left in March.

And media workers, such as GMs of powerful Yahoo news, sports, finance and mobile efforts, all under departing Audience head David Ko and VP of Media Jimmy Pitaro, are also wondering who is now in charge.

Here’s my promise: I will have all internal memos here, as soon as they are released and I can get my mitts on them.

It’s not clear when that will be. Sources said Yahoo might make a statement about the situation this afternoon, before the planned announcement tomorrow afternoon about the exec departures, but it has not been determined yet.

But sources said Yahoo might have an exec to announce to replace at least Schneider by today, given how important sales are to the company.

Since Chief Product Officer Blake Irving is from Microsoft and he has brought in several execs from there to Yahoo, rumors are swirling around yet another one coming in.

Some outside partners are also nervous, including those staying at Microsoft.

In an interview just this morning with the new head of global ad sales for Microsoft (MSFT) Carolyn Everson, for example, she pointed out that Yahoo is slated to take over premium online ad sales for the software giant under the terms of their search and technology partnership in just two weeks.

“I’ll be honest,” she said. “We are a little worried.” But she added that Yahoo remains an important strategic partner and the success of the alliance is a key focus.

Worried? Get in line, it seems.

A growing number of American adults and children face complex medical conditions like heart disease and diabetes. They may have drug or food allergies, suffer from disorders like autism, or take medications like the blood thinner coumadin that medical staff should know about in an emergency.

New bracelets and other medical-identification systems can fill in first responders on practically a patient’s complete health history. They’re a far cry from the simple identification bracelets of the past, which with a few engraved words informed medics that a person was, perhaps, allergic to penicillin. They can steer first responders to a secure website or toll-free phone number, or initiate a text message, to get the medical and prescription history of a patient who may be unconscious or unable to talk about their condition.

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This week, I tested the device that hopes to do that: FlipShare TV (www.theflip.com). This is a $150 box that’s available as of Wednesday at Amazon.com (AMZN). It plugs into any TV and receives videos that are wirelessly shared. These videos can come directly from the hard drive of a nearby Windows PC or Mac, or via “channels” that you create so you or anyone else can post and share videos via the Internet by simply entering an email address.

The $150 FlipShare TV consists of a box (top), remote and USB key.

FlipShare TV would be a useful gift for friends or family members who don’t want to bother with logging onto a site to watch shared videos or photos. It takes just minutes to set up, thanks to straightforward plug-and-play software, which originally made the Flip video cameras so popular.

I tried FlipShare TV using Windows PCs and Macs, on an analog TV (using the included red, white and yellow audio-video cable to connect the box to the TV) and on a high-definition TV (using an HDMI cable, which is sold separately, usually for between $10 and $20). Included with FlipShare TV are a simple white remote control and a USB key that plugs into the computer to communicate with the box.

My FlipShare TV box occasionally dropped the signal of a computer that was just 10 feet away, forcing me to unplug and re-plug its power cord to get it to work. Cisco said this was a problem in the pre-production unit that I tested and that this issue was fixed in final-production boxes. The company recommends that the FlipShare TV box be within 200 feet of the computer with the plugged-in USB key. When it worked, I enjoyed watching videos, like those from a friend’s Thanksgiving charades tournament, on the big screen with such little effort.

A few obstacles stand between you and the nostalgia of once again watching home videos from the couch. For starters, only videos that are captured with a Flip video camera (the least expensive model costs $150) definitely can be shared via the FlipShare TV box. (A techie workaround may be used to convert some other videos into a different format for viewing, but the company isn’t advertising this.)

Another problem is that to receive new videos on the FlipShare TV box, your corresponding computer must be on, its USB key must be plugged into it, and the FlipShare software must be running.

But the most irritating issue with the FlipShare TV is that this box lacks an indicator to notify users when new videos are available for viewing. Instead, people must rely on text messages, emails, or Facebook notifications to know when someone has shared a new video. There is nothing wrong with these kinds of notifications—at least not for frequent users of email, Facebook and text messaging. But I imagine my grandparents or my parents using FlipShare TV, and none of them would want to be told about new videos via text message or Facebook. My parents would likely be checking email on a different floor of our house, not near the main TV where this box would sit.

Assuming all systems are go, you need only to hit the “Input” button on your regular TV remote to switch over to FlipShare TV. The box creates its own point-to-point wireless network linking it to the USB key on the computer, so it doesn’t depend on the quality of your home Wi-Fi network, or even require that you have one.

FlipShare software, which installs on a Mac or Windows PC as soon as the USB key is plugged in, is easy to learn if you’ve never used it. If you own a Flip video camera, this software was automatically installed when you first plugged the camera into a computer, offering to save the camera’s videos. It even auto-sorts video clips in folders like “September 2009″ according to when they were captured.

A category called Flip Channels creates a private place online where you can drag and drop any video for instant sharing with selected people, who receive notifications that a video is available for viewing on the channel. Those people can revisit the channel online whenever they want, unlike the traditional method of sharing videos via email, which requires digging up the original email to locate a video link again. And if the original “sharer” allows it, you can “re-share” a video via the Flip Channels with other people. Flip Channels also serve as a Web-based storage place for your videos, so you don’t have to worry about your hard drive crashing and losing all of the Flip videos you’ve off-loaded onto a computer.

A menu button on the FlipShare TV box remote displays a simple list on the TV screen with the option to view favorites (like a special video you saved), videos stored on the computer or videos shared via channels.

As soon as a new video is posted to a channel you have acces to, it appears on the TV menu in a section labeled “New Items.” Two friends shared several videos with me and thumbnail images representing each clip appeared instantly in New Items on my TV screen. After I watched a new video, it no longer appeared in that section but instead was placed into a section with the channel name given by the person who shared it. Along with videos, I also imported some JPEG photos to my personal channel.

After 10 minutes of sitting idle, the screen of the TV connected to your FlipShare TV box will fill with still images representing each video, like an ever-changing collage.

So as it is now, this box helps people circumvent the computer and go straight to the living room—but only as long as they are aware that someone shared a new video with them; their computer is on with its USB key plugged in; and the FlipShare software is running on a computer within range. Cisco says it will introduce a version of the FlipShare TV next year with an indicator so people will know exactly when someone has shared a video with them.

FlipShare TV makes a lot of sense as a simple way to watch videos and look at photos in the living room. But it needs to be more intuitive for all users before family and friends can really sit back and enjoy the show.

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com