Lonely Planet’s new San Francisco-based mobile startup has gone live with its flagship mobile travel guide app Wenzani, which paidContent first reported about in September.

Richard Branson is no stranger to investing in mobile media: among his more notable moves have been establishing *Virgin Mobile* years ago, and more recently moving into iPad publishing with Project magazine. Today comes news of his latest foray into the wireless world: an investment in the mobile payments startup…

Location, location, location: it’s the time-honored mantra of real-estate agents and retailers, but could just as well be applied to Google (NSDQ: GOOG), which is ramping up the functionality of its mapping service with realtime results from Inrix.

Time Out, the listings and guidebook publisher, is upping its digital and social game: it has bought the UK-based semantic analysis company LikeCube to try to deliver more relevant events and offers to users. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Just as the warm weather and vacation season begin to kick off in Europe, the European Commission has beamed a light on one of the most expensive aspects of summer travel: mobile costs. Neelie Kroes, the European Commission vice president for the Digital Agenda (pictured), today laid out a new…

BBC Worldwide may now own all 100 percent of Lonely Planet, but the travel guide’s ultimate flight path is not yet necessarily set out.

BBC Worldwide is paying A$67.2m (£42.1m) to acquire the 25% of travel guide publisher Lonely Planet that it does not already own.

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) may be about to make its entry into the travel search market—but not quite in the way people expected. Rather than buy a travel search engine directly—like Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) did when it bought Farecast or Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) did with FareChase—Google is reportedly interested in buying…

By Kevin Anderson: After a little more than two years as The BBC’sexecutive product manager for audiovisual products, James Cridland is leaving. He posted his departure email on his personal blog. “There’s a lot I’ve learnt: both on how to do things and, frankly, how not to do things,” he…

Leading financial comparison site Moneysupermarket.com saw its Jan-to-June operating profits fall 89 percent from last year to £1.4 million, as the recession hit consumer spending.

—Sport sells Front: Daily Sport publisher Sport Media Group has sold lads’ mag Front for just £87,500 to start-up Kane Limited, just 14 months after buying it for £265,000. SMG reveals that the title and its parent company Flip Media made a pre-tax (and pre-consultants’ fee) loss of £115,000 in…

On the way to making Moneysupermarket.com the leading financial comparison site, founder Simon Nixon reaped £126 million by selling shares in the site’s 2007 flotation. Now just executive deputy chairman, Nixon has set his sites on a new venture - Simonseeks.com asks readers to submit holiday reviews, and will pay…

A rash of new iPhone apps… —Dopplr: The business travel social net has taken its Social Atlas to the iPhone, price free, putting it up against the wealth of apps that find recommended nearby restaurants, bars and hotels. Nokia (NYSE: NOK), BlackBerry and Android roll-outs are planned. —ShopStyle.co.uk: The fashion…

Unlikely as it may seem, Sweden’s Global Gaming Factory wants to buy The Pirate Bay for SEK60 million (£4.7 million). At the MusExpo Europe ‘09 conference in London on Tuesday, I held the mic in front of some digital music industry figures. Here are the audio clips... Listen!

Simon Nixon, who built Moneysupermarket.com in to a £840 million financial services empire, is returning to the start-up fold with Simonseeks: a site for user-submitted travel reviews that promises to split income from travel booking affiliates with contributers. Perhaps targeting amateur writers and laid-off travel journalists like eHow before it,…