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...

Two days ago I wrote about a thermostat you can adjust from your phone, and today Allure Energy announced another twist on the idea. The company connects your thermostat to a BlackBerry or iPhone app that tracks how far you are from home and adjusts your thermostat accordingly. Think of it as a location-based service for interacting with your thermostat. When you leave in the morning, the system calibrates your...

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...

Glam Media, the top-ranked women’s media network, is honing in on another target: men. This morning the company is launching BrashSports, a new content channel that encompasses a network of more than 25 sports-related properties, including SportsFanLive and Bloguin. The launch comes on the heels of Glam’s acquisition of sports media ad network Sportgenic last week. That deal was for Sportgenic’s ...

Best Buy is rolling out an in-store mobile couponing system in conjunction with a startup called shopkick. The system will be in place in 187 stores by tomorrow and 257 stores by October 1. Earlier this month, we got a preview of how the system works (see video below). Instead of checking in, as you would with a geo app like Foursquare or Gowalla, shopkick automatically recognizes when someone with the shopkick...