Officially launching today is Mappiness, a UK iPhone app that “maps Happiness” by pinging users with a survey in order to plot out their feelings during the day (happiness, in this case, is apparently user-defined). Using LBS, the app links responses and response locations to environmental data in an attempt to, according to lead researcher George MacKerron, “better find answers on the impacts of...

At least according to the folks at custom badge site Osnapz, who have created a Foursquare brand leaderboard stack ranking the location based service’s many promiscuous partnerships in terms of follower count, with Zagat in the top slot at 48,136. For the uninitiated, the leaderboard is a glimpse into some of the more obscure Foursquare brand tie-ins and badges, some of them holdovers from earlier campaigns...

Have the failures of Evite turned you off online invites entirely? Don’t despair, the other, prettier invite service Pingg has launched a Threadless-type Pingg Studio platform for artists and designers. And while the crowd-sourced content model is one of those that everyone is eager to copy, courting the design community is an interesting move for Pingg, which competes with Evite, Facebook Events, and My...

Cardlytics, which provides solutions for transaction marketing within banking, this morning announced that it has raised $18 million in financing. New investors ITC Holdings and Kinetic Ventures led the round. According to the press release, all of Cardlytics’ previous investors participated, including Canaan Partners, Polaris Venture Partners and Total Technology Ventures. It’s unclear how much...

As students head back to school, eBay is getting into mobile textbook sales with the launch of a a new iPhone app from Half.com, which eBay bought in 2000 for $350 million. The Half.com iPhone app is also the first eBay buying application to integrate barcode scanning technology, which was implemented through the acquisition of RedLaser in June. The app allows users to scan the barcodes on items to find the best...