Dubbed Viewdini, the app allows users to search for a particular title, actor or keyword across a variety of video services, including Netflix, Hulu Plus, Comcast Xfinity and mSpot.

“We are just seeing a hunger for people wanting to watch video,” Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead said in an interview. Viewdini isn’t a video service in its own right, but rather a portal of content found on others’ services. Still, Mead called Viewdini one of the carrier’s key product launches for the year.

“I think this will capture the audience’s imagination,” Mead said.

The idea is that the ability to stream high-quality video is one of the things that sets LTE apart from other wireless services. Of course, one of the big challenges is that although the service is plenty fast, watching just a handful of hours of video in a month could put a customer over their data allotment.

Mead said that Verizon has plenty of systems in place to keep customers from unknowingly going over their data limit, including text alerts when customers hit 50 percent, 75 percent and 90 percent of their data limit.

“We never want customers to be surprised,” Mead said. However, he added that the company also has competitive pricing for customers who find video they want to watch and choose to go over their original data cap. “We look at it as great flexibility for customers.”

In addition to helping find videos, Viewdini will also have IMDB-style information on the movies and TV shows. Mead said that Viewdini will be limited to Verizon Wireless customers when it launches later this month.

“This is a competitive differentiator,” Mead said.

While Viewdini is Android-only at launch, the carrier said it expects eventually to add support for other operating systems.

Mead said that Verizon is working to spur strong demand for mobile services, as well as enough bandwidth to serve that demand. Mead said that the company is pleased with how its 4G LTE network is being used thus far.

“What we’re seeing is the growth that we wanted to see,” he said. “What we are seeing is customers discovering the breadth of what they can do on the Verizon network. We’re very encouraged by that.”

Only a small fraction of Verizon Wireless customers are on 4G LTE, however, with the vast majority of its customers still using 3G service.

Verizon has been actively pitching the power of what the new higher-speed network can do, through its own efforts like Viewdini, as well as through content partnerships, including its deal with the National Hockey League, in which its 4G customers get added content when using the league’s mobile app.

Next up on Mead’s to-do list is acquiring the spectrum needed to build the next generation of networks. Part of that strategy involves the company’s proposed deal to acquire a swath of spectrum from a group of cable companies — a deal opposed by T-Mobile, Sprint and an organization of rural carriers.

“We view AWS [the spectrum it is seeking to buy from the cable companies] as the spectrum where we will expand our LTE services and capacity going forward,” Mead said. “We’re still encouraged that we’ll have approval to move on later on this summer.”

In a blog post on Friday, the No. 4 carrier rejected the idea that pooled data plans will end up being a better value.

“Do families really want to keep track of each others’ data consumption?” T-Mobile said. “We don’t think so. Just imagine mom’s email is suddenly unavailable because her teenage son watched an HD movie on his phone, consuming the family’s data allotment.”

Verizon has said it will offer tiered data plans starting in midsummer, while AT&T has said it is working on a family data plan of its own. Sprint, meanwhile, is keeping its focus on unlimited plans as well.

T-Mobile acknowledges that bandwidth is a limited resource, but says that shared data is not the way to go.

So, naturally, there was much kerfuffle on Wednesday after reports that Verizon was planning to ax plans, even for those grandfathered in. The reports stemmed from comments made by Verizon Communications CFO Fran Shammo at an investor conference.

Thing is, he didn’t actually say that those on plans would lose them. However, he did suggest that those looking to upgrade to a 4G LTE smartphone would soon be unable to take their plan on to a new phone.

Until now, Verizon has been letting those with unlimited plans move to 4G and keep their plan. Shammo said that will come to an end once the company introduces shared data plans this summer.

“So when you think about our 3G base, a lot of our 3G base is unlimited,” Shammo said. “As they start to migrate into 4G, they will have to come off of unlimited and go into the data share plan.”

But those who have unlimited plans and are okay with keeping their 3G phones are likely to be able to keep their plan. My understanding is that there are Verizon customers on 10-year-old rate plans and, so long as they are happy with their phone, no one will force them to change plans.

In a statement on Thursday, Verizon Wireless didn’t exactly clear things up entirely, but suggested that there will be fair warning before anything changes.

As we have stated publicly, Verizon Wireless has been re-evaluating its data pricing structure for some time, Customers have told us that they want to share data, similar to how they share minutes today. We are working on plans to provide customers with that option later this year.

We will share specific details of the plans and any related policy changes well in advance of their introduction, so customers will have time to evaluate their choices and make the best decisions for their wireless service. It is our goal and commitment to continue to provide customers with the same high value service they have come to expect from Verizon Wireless.

That said, if you have an unlimited plan and think you might want to move to 4G, it’s probably best to do so now.

Update: I got a few more details on how this will be rolled out. First of all, Verizon is saying definitively that customers that are on an unlimited plan and want to keep it with their existing phone can do so.

What will happen is that once shared data plans arrive, unlimited data customers won’t be able to upgrade to a new phone at a discount and keep their unlimited plan. Should they want to, customers could opt to pay the full unsubsidized price for a new phone (3G or 4G) and keep their unlimited data plan.

The industry’s answer to that — shared data plans that spread a pool of gigabytes across devices — has been promised for a while now. Though France Telecom and a few others have tried them outside the U.S., the domestic carriers have taken their time in readying such plans.

Now, however, Verizon Wireless says it is nearly ready with a “family data plan” and will launch the first ones in midsummer.

“We think we have something that is very different, very innovative, something that really hasn’t been tried before in the industry and you will see that this midsummer,” Verizon Communications CFO Fran Shammo said, speaking Wednesday at a J.P. Morgan investor conference.

AT&T has also said it is working on a plan, but has yet to detail timing. T-Mobile and Sprint have said their energy is focused more around per-device unlimited plans.

Shammo said that the move to shared data plans should help the carrier persuade more tablet buyers to go cellular.

“I think as we go into data share plans and get folks to be able to share that data across all of their devices, I think you’re going to see the industry start to pick up a lot of that activation that hasn’t been there before,” Shammo said.

However, the shift to 4G and shared data plans could be bad news for those clinging on to unlimited data plans.

“So when you think about our 3G base, a lot of our 3G base is unlimited,” Shammo said. “As they start to migrate into 4G, they will have to come off of unlimited and go into the data share plan. And that is beneficial for us for many reasons, obviously.”

Just how agressive Verizon will be in pushing customers versus waiting for them to upgrade is unclear.

A Verizon Wireless spokesperson declined to elaborate on Shammo’s comments.

The latest evidence came Monday, as Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures teamed with chipmaker Nvidia to buy approximately 500 patents from IPWireless.

The patents include some related to 3G and 4G technologies, including LTE, the companies said. Terms of the deal, which closed at the end of last month, were not disclosed.

Ownership of the patents will be split between Nvidia and Intellectual Ventures, with Nvidia getting license to all of the patents it didn’t get to purchase.

Intellectual Ventures has already sued several major carriers over patents. In Febuary, it sued Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T, and last week it added U.S. Cellular to the proceedings. (Verizon Wireless, not named in the suit, is a licensee of Intellectual Ventures.)

The 15th straight quarter of contract customer losses puts the carrier further behind AT&T and Verizon Wireless in the race to lock users into two-year commitments.

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Available in the “coming weeks,” the HTC Droid Incredible 4G LTE improves on previous versions of the phone by bringing more advanced multimedia options and faster data speeds, thanks to its compatibility with Verizon’s 4G LTE network.

The media features include an eight-megapixel camera that lets you capture photos and HD video at the same time, which is nice, since you no longer have to fumble with switching between video and camera mode. Along the same lines, HTC promises a faster camera-activation time, so you don’t miss out on that perfect Kodak moment. Meanwhile, on the tunes side, the smartphone uses Beats Audio technology to deliver richer sound.

In addition to the speed and media enhancements, the Droid Incredible 4G LTE runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, along with the latest version of HTC Sense. The smartphone is also equipped with a four-inch super LCD qHD touchscreen, a dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor and a microSD expansion slot.

Verizon did not announce an exact release date or pricing for the Incredible at this time.

This will be an extension of Color’s current app, which gives users a way to publish live, 30-second silent video clips to Facebook.

Color CEO Bill Nguyen says his company is working to “ratchet up the quality” to enable live high-definition video broadcasting from phones. Color will be able to do this better than existing mobile social video apps, because the company is customizing its app for each Verizon phone, he said.

While there have been many attempts at live-broadcasting video apps, today’s leading mobile video apps like Socialcam and Viddy do recorded video. Color will offer ways to upload both live and recorded video, as well as still photos from within a video, according to Nguyen.

“The problem [with other apps] is that the technology they’re built upon is on the OS level. That’s not efficient enough to make this work,” Nguyen argued. “We can’t write to the OS anymore — we literally have to write to the chipset.”

Today, Color is not available in high definition at all — but it is doubling its current frame rate with new versions of its iPhone and Android apps today, and allowing Verizon users to include audio in their videos (which was the weirdest restriction ever, by the way). The videos are still limited to 30 seconds, for the time being.

What Verizon gets out of the partnership is to draw attention to the upstream video potential of its 4G LTE network. It is supposed to start preinstalling Color on some phones later this year.

Color, meanwhile, has staffed up on video experts — the Palo Alto, Calif.-based team now has more than 50 people, up from 30 last year.

Today, the San Francisco company says that Sprint is coming on board to join the three other major U.S. carriers: Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile.

While the partnership provides additional momentum for Boku, the company still has a way to go before consumers are charging all sorts of purchases to their carrier bills. Today, the majority of Boku-paid purchases are for digital goods, such as in-game currency like Facebook Credits, or virtual goods in social games from companies like Zynga.

In an interview, Boku president Ron Hirson explained that it will still be another year or so before it starts seeing physical goods like clothing or electronics being charged to a carrier bill. For that to happen, carriers will have to drop the rates even lower than what they are charging today in order to be on par with Visa or MasterCard.

Over the past two years, Hirson said, prices already have dropped from roughly 40 percent to somewhere in the “teens.”

“We are proving ourselves out, and showing to the carrier that with each incremental drop, we are growing the pie,” he said.

The next likely product category to adopt carrier billing, he said, is digital content, including music, books, or physical tickets for public transportation or concerts. Those items have a big enough profit margin to make paying slightly higher transaction fees affordable.

Other companies in the carrier billing space include Mopay, BilltoMobile and Zong, which eBay’s PayPal acquired last year. Boku strengthened its position earlier this year when it raised $35 million in fresh capital.

While carrier billing has been slow to take off, Hirson said the company believes it will be a huge opportunity because of the convenience factor. To purchase something, users enter their phone number, and then authenticate that payment via text message.

Boku said today that it also signed up a carrier-billing partnership with Deutsche Telekom in Germany, meaning that it is now processing transactions with every major carrier in France, Germany, the U.K. and the U.S.

The company also announced that it has added two executives to its team: Jon Prideaux, the former EVP at Visa, is joining as chief business officer; and Stuart Neal, the former managing director of international development for Barclaycard, is joining as SVP of Business Development.

The wireline and wireless operator said it earned $3.91 billion in net income, or 59 cents per share, for the first quarter, compared to $3.26 billion, or 51 cents per share, in last year’s first quarter. Verizon’s operating revenue was $28.2 billion, up 4.6 percent from a year earlier.

Verizon Wireless said it added 734,000 retail customers in the first quarter, including 501,000 traditional postpaid customers, to end the quarter with 93 million retail customers, a 5.2 percent increase from a year earlier. As of the end of the quarter, nearly 47 percent of traditional contract customers were using smartphones, up from 43.5 percent a quarter earlier. As far as new sales, almost three out of four new customers were opting for smartphones, up from a rate of three in five a year ago.

The company said it also posted improvements in the area of customer defections, known in the industry as “churn.”

On the wired side of things, Verizon said it added 193,000 net new FiOS Internet connections and 180,000 net new FiOS Video connections in the quarter, to give it a total of five million FiOS Internet and 4.4 million FiOS video customers by the end of March.

Update: Verizon’s slides prepared for its earnings call offer up a few more interesting numbers:

Once users have gobbled up that allotment, they can buy another 100MB for another $25.

The rate, which is available starting April 23, is still way more than one pays for data in the U.S., but also less than one might expect to pay under previous options.

Depending on how long a customer has been with their carrier and other policies, customers may also have an option to have their phone unlocked and buy a SIM card in the country in which they are traveling. That option requires some planning and hassle, but can save even more money, especially for heavy data users.

And, depending on which of two studies you believe, both can lay claim to having the fastest network.

AT&T is pushing a PCWorld study that found its network to be the faster of the two.

“In our tests, AT&T’s new LTE network pumped out the fastest speeds of any 4G provider,” PCWorld senior editor Mark Sullivan said in a statement.

Verizon, meanwhile, calls attention to a RootMetrics study that finds that it has the better-performing of the LTE networks.

“While AT&T outperformed Verizon in pure LTE download speeds, Verizon had the clear upper hand in the more meaningful real-world experience of average download and upload speeds,” RootMetrics president Bill Moore said in a post on GigaOM. “AT&T’s LTE might be faster, but our overall experience with AT&T was still slower than what we found with Verizon.”

One thing is clear: Verizon’s network covers more ground. The company is launching more cities this week and with those will have two-thirds of the U.S. population covered. AT&T’s network is still smaller, but it is rapidly adding cities as well.

Sprint, meanwhile, is just gearing up to launch LTE, while T-Mobile is aiming to launch an LTE network next year.

Indeed, Jefferies & Co. said that the first quarter could mark the first time ever that the number of postpaid customers actually declined.

“A Jefferies proprietary handset survey suggests volume expectations for [the first quarter] are the weakest in years, in line with our view that net adds are significantly lower in the quarter after an iPhone launch,” analyst Thomas Seitz said in a research note.

Jefferies sees “modest” growth in traditional customers for AT&T and Verizon, but declines at both T-Mobile and Sprint, which saw a big jump last quarter — its first with an iPhone.

“We believe there is a distinct possibility that Q1 could be the first time that the postpaid market, as a whole, loses subscribers,” Seitz said. Seitz noted that sales tend to be weak in the quarter immediately preceding and immediately following the launch of a new iPhone model.

Sales of prepaid phones may have also seen slower growth in the quarter, Seitz said.

Nonetheless, the carriers should see some revenue growth, thanks in part to the continued growth of smartphones as well as recent price hikes.

But, with smartphones already making up a big chunk of the business and nearly everyone having a cellphone, Jefferies said the wireless providers will be challenged to continue to post gains.

“Voice revenues are already in decline,” Seitz said. “We believe a material drop off in the growth rate of data revenues from slowing smartphone adoption, particularly in (the second half of the year), is a growing risk.”

In a blog post, Google disclosed the purchase but did not reveal the terms. The New York-based company was working on a number of payment technologies, including prepaid and gift cards.

It is no secret that Google Wallet has had a difficult time since launching about a year ago.

Since then, any momentum it had created was squelched when it failed to secure partnerships with the four major wireless providers in the U.S. Today, it only works on a handful of Android smartphones sold by Sprint. Other carriers — most notably, Verizon Wireless — have refused to adopt the Wallet and instead are working on their own mobile payments strategy in a joint venture called ISIS.

Additionally, the Google Wallet technology relies on near field communication, or NFC, which is not available at all retailers or embedded in many phones.

In the meantime, other companies have had some successes. EBay’s PayPal has rolled out its payment technology in all 2,000 Home Depots, and other companies, like Square, are going after the small-to-medium-sized businesses.

Google has also faced a number of internal setbacks, including a couple of departures from the team, such as the resignation of Vikas Gupta, who was the head of consumer payments, and the reassignment of Stephanie Tilenius. Additionally, it was reported today that Google Wallet’s co-founding engineer Rob von Behren has joined Square, according to NFC Times.

Osama Bedier, Google wallet and payments VP, wrote in the blog post that TxVia has partnerships with some of the industry’s best-known brands and manages more than 100 million accounts.

“Their leadership team has played an instrumental role in defining the fast-growing prepaid card segment of emerging payments,” he said. “We’ve worked closely with TxVia over the last year, and they’re a forward-thinking team that will help us take the next steps in realizing the future of commerce. We welcome the TxVia team to Google.”

Clearwire has been hunting wholesale customers since at least September, when Chief Executive, Erik Prusch, said he was in discussions with AT&T Inc., Verizon Wireless and MetroPCS Communications Inc. Leap, which operates the Cricket brand, is the smallest U.S. carrier with a national reach, with roughly half the customers of MetroPCS, its nearest competitor.

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While Sprint has invested heavily to get the iPhone on its network, it’s not so fortunate when it comes to the new iPad.

Apple’s latest tablet will run on AT&T and Verizon, including their fastest new LTE networks, but won’t run at all on Sprint’s network. Nor will T-Mobile USA be offering the new iPad.

“At this time, Sprint is not a carrier for Apple’s iPad products,” Sprint said in a statement, while T-Mobile pointed to its lineup of Android tablets.

Meanwhile, Verizon and AT&T are no doubt sharpening their pitch to compete against one another for sales of the new iPad.

Verizon clearly has the more widely deployed LTE network, available in far more cities. AT&T, meanwhile, can tout that in spots where there is no LTE, its iPad shifts down to an HSPA+ network that is much speedier than Verizon’s CDMA network.

Both carriers say they are offering the same data plans they have offered in the past with the iPad. Verizon said it will support the new iPad’s option to act as a wireless hotspot to connect other devices to the Internet, while AT&T said it is working with Apple to enable the feature. There are a bunch of options for AT&T and Verizon, laid out on their respective Web sites.

Of course, with all those extra pixels on the new iPad screen and the faster connection, one will able to burn through those usage levels far faster.

Although both AT&T and Verizon will have LTE versions of the iPad, they use different bands and thus buyers will have to make a choice as to which model they want. Apple says both models will be able to roam internationally on 3G networks.

And, of course, there remains the option to forgo the cellular modem entirely and go with a Wi-Fi-only model that costs $130 less than its LTE-equipped counterpart. With past iPads, the Wi-Fi models have proved more popular, and it will be interesting to see how and if that shifts this time around.

While LTE capability is important in the U.S., most other countries have yet to build such networks. Apple is supporting a wide range of networks globally, including a bunch of different flavors of the HSPA networks common throughout Europe.

Correction, March 16: AT&T said it is working with Apple to enable the hotspot feature, but it will not be available at launch, as initially reported here.

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T-Mobile — which just months ago was pushing antitrust authorities to approve its failed deal to sell itself to AT&T Inc. — argued in an FCC filing that Verizon Wireless’s deal poses “a clear threat to competition” and would allow the nation’s largest cellphone carrier “to accumulate even more spectrum on top of an already dominant position, while checkmating crucial avenues for growth of its smaller competitors.”

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The Wall Street Journal says that the iPad that debuts next month will support LTE, the next-generation network technology being used by both Verizon and, more recently, AT&T.

Apple has traditionally eschewed early support for faster networks, instead preferring to let such technologies mature before adding them into the iPhone. But adding a new network technology first to the iPad makes a lot of sense.

First, Apple’s tablet packs a much larger battery than its phones, meaning that even if the LTE radio chips are still a bit more power-hungry than past cellular modems, it shouldn’t dramatically hurt battery life.

Second, the iPad isn’t a phone, meaning that Apple can work on 4G data without having to worry about things like call management and shifting calls.

Finally, Apple can afford to have its iPad support cellular networks that aren’t fully deployed. After all, many of its sales are still of the Wi-Fi only variety.

With the phone, Apple really wants any technology it supports to be widely usable. Why take a cost, size and battery hit, for example, if many of the world’s carriers don’t yet have LTE networks on which to run?

But, after getting a strong start in the U.S., LTE is rapidly gaining steam globally. Sprint, for example, plans to add an LTE network later this year, and many global carriers are also adding LTE support.

But a month later, both PayPal and its parent company eBay say they have the depth of leadership necessary to execute its plan to enter the world of in-store payments.

In an interview, David Marcus, PayPal’s VP of mobile, made the case for why its mobile payments strategy will prevail in a market surrounded by incumbents like Visa, MasterCard and American Express, as well as new entrants like Google.

On the matter of Thompson’s departure, he downplayed the role of one executive.

“The strategy wasn’t one man’s thing,” he argued. “It was a shock for 24 to 48 hours, but we control our destiny, and it’s about execution now. So far, so good.”

In addition to speaking to Marcus and several other executives, AllThingsD got an exclusive look at the company’s newly constructed “Shopping Showcase,” which will be used to demonstrate to potential partners how it envisions next-generation payments will occur at the register.

From the ground floor of the company’s San Jose headquarters, it has built several realistic-looking facades, including a hardware store, a grocery store, a clothing store and cafe; users can walk from one experience to the next. I also tried out the experience of making a real purchase at Home Depot, where it is currently being piloted at many San Jose-area stores. (See the slideshow here.)

To be sure, Thompson’s departure was abrupt. He gave PayPal only 15 hours’ notice before the planned announcement that January morning by Yahoo.

But the company now maintains that its strategy for the next two years had long since been cemented, making it much easier to absorb the blow.

Over the next few years, PayPal will be trying to take its online relationship with 106 million consumers worldwide into the physical payments world, by extending its digital wallet services to cash registers at grocery stores, hardware stores and other retail locations.

It plans to do this through a series of different technologies, including PIN codes, credit cards and other services.

Meanwhile, other providers are trying to attack the market using near field communication, where users will tap their mobile phone at the register in order to pay.

Google, Visa, MasterCard and a consortium of wireless carriers, including AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile, are all working on similar solutions, which will require retailers and consumers to upgrade their point-of-sale technology and mobile phones, respectively.

“Yes, NFC will be useful, and we’ll be there, but today we are trying to do more than replace swiping with tapping,” Marcus said.

He envisions shopping becoming a more fluid experience. Today, you pick out the items you want, place them in your shopping cart and then stand in line at the checkout.

But in the future, he asks, why couldn’t that change? What if you paid for items in the store’s aisles, or purchased them online before picking them up in the store?

NFC can be restrictive, because you have to be at a physical location in order to tap a terminal and pay.

The scenarios are possible, given how fast things are already changing.

Last year, PayPal exceeded its own expectations, reaching $4 billion in mobile payment volume. This year, it expects to increase that to $7 billion. One of those purchases last year was a $40,000 backhoe, which someone bought using PayPal on their phone.

“By the time NFC catches up, we will be in a world that will move away from the point-of-sales terminal,” he predicts.

As with PayPal’s traditional business, it expects to make money on fees, also called the interchange rate, which the retailer is responsible for paying. Its goal is not to provide a cheaper solution than the incumbents. Rather, it wants to provide other perks that will help retailers and provide incentive for the retailers to want to work with PayPal.

Such perks could include platforms that will allow the retailers to offer loyalty programs, shopping lists, credit options or coupons.

“If you add a payment method that adds 30 to 40 percent more volume [in business to the retailer], then the interchange doesn’t matter,” Marcus said.

Completed two weeks ago, the showcase is designed to woo major retailers and other potential partners that may be considering adopting PayPal’s mobile payments services.

The room includes several realistic-looking facades, including a hardware store, a cafe, a grocery store and a clothing retailer.

In each scenario, it demonstrates how it uses a mix of new technologies, offers and loyalty programs to make it faster and easier to and pay and stay engaged with the retailer.

What you won’t see is demonstrations of near field communications, which is a technology being used by many of its competitors. (To learn why it is not using NFC, read an interview with PayPal’s VP of Mobile David Marcus, coming later today.)

I also visited Home Depot in San Jose to buy something using my PayPal account. The service is now live at many of the Bay Area hardware stores.

Today, PayPal is one of the leading online payments companies, with 106 million users worldwide; but this year, the eBay-owned company is attempting to move offline, by partnering with retailers like Home Depot and other major chains to be announced later this year.

Here are the photos from the Shopping Shopping Showcase and Home Depot shopping visits:

View the slideshow

You’ll have to take my word for this, but this is exactly what it looks and sounds like on my phone — there’s no drop in quality in this YouTube upload.

What’s truly bizarre is that the live NFL streaming that Verizon does provide is actually pretty good. Or at least it was, when they were offering it for free at the beginning of the season. I don’t know why they’d want to promote it with something that looked like it was made on a Commodore 64.

Also odd: Verizon has made competent, attractive ads for its NFL offering in the past. Here’s one from 2011:

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Neil Webster)

And for those who are into both football and geekery, tomorrow is kind of like the Super Bowl. Well, technically speaking, I guess tomorrow is like the Super Bowl for everyone.

Anyhoo. For everyone looking for some tech to go with their gridiron, there are lots of options.

First of all, NBC is streaming the Super Bowl live over the Internet, for those who can’t make it to a television or want a second screen to enjoy even more of the action.

ESPN president John Skipper said at D: Dive Into Media that he thinks giving away the game for free is a bad idea, but NBC paid for the rights, so they get to do what ever they want.

Verizon is also broadcasting the game live to the smallest of screens via its NFL Mobile service. (However, Peter Kafka notes their marketing of said service could use some work.)

Second, there are a ton of Super Bowl apps, including the official ones for both iPhone and Android, as well as a game program. Peanuts are still not downloadable, but content-tagging app Shazam is offering a variety of commercial tie-ins. Check here for even more game-day apps.

And of course, the big game will be the talk of Twitter, to be sure.

Lastly, as a special treat, AllThingsD will be offering live coverage of the game, the commercials and the social-media hoopla. We had so much fun in January with Footballmer, our liveblog mash-up of Steve Ballmer’s final CES keynote and the BCS championship, that we decided to do it again.

This time, though, I’ll actually get to watch the game, rather than having Ballmer duty. I’ll be commenting on the game, the commercials, the tech and the Twitter commentary. Check back tomorrow before kickoff for that.

Gupta joined the company 18 months ago after Google acquired Jambool, a virtual goods payment platform where he was a founder and CEO. More recently, he’d been one of the leaders on the payments team, overseeing Google Wallet and reporting to Osama Bedier, Google’s VP of Payments.

“I can confirm that Vikas has left Google and we wish him all the best in his future endeavors,” a spokesman said.

Jambool’s product, Social Gold, was rolled into Google’s payment products and is being used for in-app purchases on both Android Market and Google+ Games.

According to Gupta’s LinkedIn page, he joined Google in August 2010 and held the title of head of consumer payments. Jambool reportedly was purchased for $55 million before any additional earn-outs. Prior to founding Jambool, Gupta worked at Amazon.

Gupta’s departure is the second management move made in the Google Wallet ranks over the past week.

A spokesperson declined to say if the division was undergoing a wider restructuring, but last week, I reported that Google’s VP of Commerce Stephanie Tilenius was moving into a more global position. And, as part of that, Bedier will be taking on a larger role within Google Wallet, though his title will not be changing.

The Wallet is Google’s mobile payments strategy that allows users to tap their phone at the register to pay using near field communication technology. The company has already successfully formed alliances with both banks and retailers, and is leveraging its vast install base of Android users.

Today, it is live with some merchants, although it does face some challenges.

Currently, it only works on one phone from Sprint, and both consumers and merchants will most likely have to upgrade their hardware for it to work. Additionally, some carriers, such as Verizon Wireless, have decided to disable Google Wallet on phones they are shipping. Other carriers, which are part of a mobile wallet joint venture called ISIS, are expected to follow suit, effectively limiting access for many U.S. consumers.

More than six months after hosting a flashy launch event, the business may be getting a lot harder than it originally looked.