Mobile bar code integrations with traditional media seem to be coming at us faster and faster. The latest is Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue. The annual institution of the sporting press hits newsstands today, filled with 2D bar codes that let users access mobile videos of swimsuit models.

The technology is provided by JAGTAG, a competitor to Scanbuy that we wrote about last week. JAGTAG’s claim to fame is interoperability with any phone or mobile operating system. Rather than special software required at the device level, a picture of the bar code is taken then sent in (via text) and returned with whatever media is being requested. In this case, its a video clip sent via MMS.

The compatibility is a selling point, given the low overall penetration of smartphones. But a downloaded smartphone app will offer a more integrated user experience. Smartphone owners are also heavier users of mobile media, and generally represent more attractive ad targets.

Regardless of formats and standards (and we will see format wars), expect to see bar codes and visual search invade traditional media, billboards, window fronts and anywhere where there’s interest in “more information.” Of course with swimsuit models, there is always interest in more.

The dial has been turned up lately on mobile location targeting  — within social media, local search, and advertising contexts.  The latest news comes from mobile ad network MoVoxx, which has enhanced its location targeting with Useful Networks‘ PlaceWhere platform. From the release:

MoVoxx’s GeoSense™ mobile ad platform ingests location data from Useful Networks’ PlaceWhere™ platform, which connects with wireless carriers and other sources to aggregate location data. PlaceWhere is built on the principle of protecting consumer privacy, ensuring location data is never shared without explicit consent from the end user. This unique approach works on all phones connected to the network, vastly extending reach beyond traditional GPS and downloadable app-based solutions. PlaceWhere offers ad networks, mobile marketers and application developers a simple set of APIs to accelerate time-to-market and reduce costs for launching location-aware products and services.

As we discussed in a recent interview with Movoxx, it’s leading the way with location based ad targeting for small businesses (via local channel partners). The company sees potential in this SMB segment as well as national advertisers that want to target users in specific locations where they have interests.

Better location targeting will assist on both fronts, and we should see more from MoVoxx along these lines. Also expect similar moves from other mobile ad networks that will move towards the acute location targeting that the mobile device is capable of, and that advertisers will increasingly demand.

We’ll hear more on this subject at BIA/Kelsey’s Marketplaces Conference, March 22-24, where MoVoxx CEO Alec Andronikov will speak.

Loopt continues to evolve from a location based social network to more of a local search utility. This comes during a general shift of market attention towards location based mobile apps and the commercial intent that can be inherent in their use.

Yesterday Loopt took another step towards monetizing some of these local interactions by partnering with Mobile Spinach. The partnership will provide Loopt users with geotargeted coupons and promotions for local businesses.

Financial terms weren’t disclosed but this represents Loopt’s first relationship with a local content aggregator. In the past it has done direct deals with national advertisers with localized constituents, such as Jack in the Box. It will roll out first in San Francisco and be available to users of Loopt’s smart phone apps (not mobile web yet).

This follows a string of recent moves for Loopt including, adding local ratings and reviews, integration of Foursquare-like “check-ins”, and development of a customer loyalty program (to be rolled out soon). Expect for this evolution to continue over the coming months.

Loopt CEO Sam Altman will elaborate on company’s directions in the mobile local space during BIA/Kelsey’s Marketplaces Conference in San Diego, March 22-24.

Zvents, the events lister, is reporting 35 percent year over year growth with over eight million unique visitors, largely due to its powering events for 285 local media brands, including  major newspapers and the NBC owned-and-operated TV stations.

CEO Ethan Stock cites Quantcast data showing Zvents Media Network as the 250^th most used net on the Web, ahead of Citysearch (#267) and Local.com (#291). “We’re a very large local property by any measure,” he says.

The company, which has raised $32 million over its five year history, also claims it has been averaging 12,000 monthly event listers. These use the site to promote a wide range of local events and activities, including live music, performing arts, sporting events and community activities.

Of those listers, roughly 1200, or 10 percent, are now boosting their presence by taking out ads via self–serve – a percentage that Stock thinks will climb to 20 percent in 2010. The company also sells regional and national accounts via telemarketing and national sales, with top categories including major concert promoters, sports teams, casinos and  home and garden events.

High end shopping, with its sales-oriented events, such as Williams Sonoma cooking demonstrations, are also becoming more important to Zvents bottom line.  “There is a significant segment of consumers who perceive shopping as entertainment,” says Stock.

The key to the company’s future in local, however, is to stay away from the trap of focusing on directory-type advertising. Instead, Zvents will stay focused on events and shopping, he says, which have the most highly motivated advertisers. “They are also relatively concentrated in terms of the volume of advertising.”

Indeed, the company’s focus on events and advertising puts it most in competition with social sites such as Facebook and Google, rather than local sites such as Citysearch and Yelp, who may be more directory oriented, says Stock. Other events oriented companies include Eventful, and “new city guide” players such as Center’d and American Towns.

In hindsight, the company’s initial focus on teaming with newspapers “look like a very smart choice,” adds Stock. While newspapers are commonly disparaged in today’s climate for their declining circulation and advertising, “they have high repeat traffic. Much more than national partners.” Top Zvents newspaper partners include SFGate, the Denver Post, Seattle PI, Boston.com, the Dallas Morning News, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, New York Daily News, and the Orange County Register.

Stock also sees a major boost coming from renewed efforts in local from national partners such as AT&T’s Yellowpages.com, which has been an investor in the company ; and from MSN, where Zvents listings will be showing up in Bing, and trigger Instant Answers via Silverlight search.

Yelp has been on a roll, and is now reporting that it gets 29 million unique visitors a month. Given that, the company’s immediate challenge is to move beyond its core base of restaurant and shopping reviews and dive deep for Yellow Pages-arena services reviews, as well as reviews for classified categories, such as autos and real estate/apartments.

Restaurants currently make up 29 percent of reviews, while shopping constitutes 23 percent. Other major categories include beauty and fitness (9 percent), arts & entertainment (8 percent), home and local services (7 percent), entertainment (5 percent), and nightlife (4 percent).

Apartments are certainly a good place for Yelp to concentrate on, especially given the youthful target sought by apartment managers. Almost half of Yelp’s users (46 percent) are between 18 and 34 years old, while 36 percent are between 35 and 49.

So it was no surprise that Yelp COO Geoff Donaker was out evangelizing the cause this morning on a webinar conducted by NCI’s Apartment Finder, a leading publication for managers of mega-apartment complexes.

The evangelism effort’s a good idea. In a survey before the call, just 35 percent of the webinar audience said they were already familiar with Yelp, and just 5 percent said they were already engaged with Yelp as a business owner. Sixty-one percent, however, said they had never heard of it.

Donaker told the webinar attendees that while he hoped they eventually advertised on Yelp, he was mostly interested in getting them tuned into Yelp as a marketing resource and to get them to access their business owner accounts and improve their pages. He noted that most reviews on Yelp were actually positive ones and they shouldn’t be afraid of the community feedback.

Many apartment managers, however, have cold feet vis-a-vis reviews due to what Apartment Finder VP of Operations Judy Bellack suggested was “extremely negative” experience with one site in particular: Internet Brands’ ApartmentRatings.com.

One of the success factors for apps joining the crowded fray (140,000 iPhone apps) is elegant melding with the hardware and general mobile “use case.” This is contrasted with Web-based products that shove themselves onto a smaller screen. Bar code scanning apps and voice search are a few examples we’ve explored here recently.

Siri launched today in the latter category with an iPhone app that has a voice controlled interface to find and discover items and events around you. After $24 million in funding and years of Darpa-supported underlying research at SRI, it carries a robust natural language processor.

Results from spoken queries are returned from 30 different services (via API) and more to come. These include OpenTable, TaxiMagic, MovieTickets.com, WeatherBug, Yahoo Local, Eventful, Citysearch, and AllMenus. In this way, it is making a clear run at ultimate mobile aggregator status.

True to the mobile device, it doesn’t require a lot of finger pecking, but rather discovers the right source based on semantic analysis. This requires speech-to-text capability as well as a cognitive engine to discern and return appropriate results. Like many such systems, it will get better over time via feedback loop and machine learning.

It’s available for free in the App Store, though it’s recommended for use on the iPhone 3Gs, due to required processing speeds (more compatibility to come later). Siri will make money through affiliate revenues with its content partners — usually tied to local actions taken, such as table reservations through OpenTable.

It looks to have all the ingredients to quickly surface in the App Store’s most-popular lists. You can also picture it easily making its way to “there’s an app for that” TV spots. We should see more voice search interfaces develop and more intelligent discovery engines — both important trends in mobile. This is the first to combine them in what appears to be an elegant fashion.

It will require more review, a conversation with the company, and of course the market’s reaction. More to come on all fronts. In the meantime, below is a video that highlights its features, including natural language processing. “Take me drunk, I’m home” is my favorite (but hopefully not needed anytime soon).

If you’re like me, your computer is weighed down with way too many files, e-mails and spyware. And if you’re really like me, you don’t have any time to do a system purge.

Short of throwing a party whose theme is just a ruse to have friends do it for you, there’s a national day to band together in commiseration around much needed system cleansing. Yes, this really exists; Feb. 8 (this Monday).

It was started in 2000 by Institute for Business Technology, with the idea that slow machines aren’t just aggravating, but can dig into productivity and thus profitability. A fair amount of system maintenance vendors like iolo are backing the day for obvious reasons.

Here are a few stats they provided:

• The average American adult has 1,800 digital files, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, making searching them quite a task.
• Executives waste six weeks each year looking for lost items and information, according to a study published in the Wall Street Journal, adding up for huge corporate operating losses.
• Americans waste nine million hours per day searching for misplaced items. On average, people spend a year of our lives looking for lost items, according to the National Association of Professional Organizers. Imagine the things you could do if cleaning up your computer saved some of those hours!
• In 2007 alone more than 40 million computers were dumped, up from 20 million in 1998. On average, each computer lasted only 30 months, that short life span often attributed to the need for larger hard drive. Save yourself the money and the environment the damage by freeing up space on your old hard drive.

You can find out more and get in on the action (including list of tips) here and here.

Gannett has always seemed to be a likely directory player. In fact, the world’s largest newspaper publisher owns a small group of print directories. It also provides a white-labeled online directory product to its media properties.

But as directories, search and user-generated content have become more commingled, Gannett has gone a step further with the launch of FindItNow.com, a new directory product from its Planet Discover division.

FindItNow.com is national, but has been localized for specific markets.  It is currently live in three markets: Rochester, Nashville and Burlington, Vermont. Only local information and content is featured. Key categories include Auto, Dining & Entertainment, Health & Medicine, Pets & Animals and Shopping.

The site is integrated with Facebook Connect, and users can add reviews, photos and business details if they register. In Rochester, 883 people have registered to contribute information; in Nashville, 828 people have registered; and in Burlington, 218 people have registered.

The site, in fact, is a lot like other search-driven directories, such as MerchantCircle, ShopCity, SMBLive’s Cloud Profile and others. As with other sites, local businesses have the option of free or paid tiers. The paid tiers are set at $49 or $99 per month. Depending on which tier they choose, businesses can have preferred search result placement, company logo and dominant photo, extended business description, additional photos and unlimited coupons.

Marketplaces 2010 takes place just seven weeks from now in San Diego (March 22-24). We are putting the finishing touches on the program, and have added MANY exciting new speakers in just the past few weeks.

The event is totally dedicated to the higher value/conversion/engagement ethos of vertical media. For sure, this isn’t one size fits all of newspapers and Yellow Pages anymore (but then again, these traditional media are rapidly verticalizing too).

Featured sessions include five big keynotes; Mike Boland’s Mobile Vertical SuperForum; and a preconference session on the Tools of Marketplaces, including experts on search, video, enhanced calls, online scheduling, promotion and classifieds.

We also have cutting-edge panels on new directories and city guides; small-business marketplaces; vertical ad networks; vertical search; content aggregators (a great session with Examiner.com CEO Rick Blair); and local retailers and marketplaces. To top it all off, there is a special “making money” session with Classifieds Master Tony Lee, chief alliance officer of Adicio.

Basically, everyone is on board. Our five big keynotes will come from:

• Jon Brod, Executive VP, AOL Ventures
• Jay Herratti, CEO, Citysearch
• Andrew Mason, Founder and CEO, Groupon
• Sam Sebastian, Director, Local & B2B Markets, Google
• Craig Smith, CEO, ServiceMagic

Mike Boland’s Mobile Vertical SuperForum has eight great speakers:

• Sam Altman, Cofounder and CEO, Loopt
• Alec Andronikov, CEO, MoVoxx
• Craig Hagopian, President, V-Enable
• Scott Jampol, Senior Director of Consumer Marketing, OpenTable
• Steve Larsen, CEO, CallSpark
• Alexander Muse, Cofounder, Big in Japan (ShopSavvy)
• Eric Singley, Mobile Product Manager, Yelp
• David Sturtz, Cofounder and CEO, RepairPal

Other featured speakers include:

• Ethan Anderson, Cofounder, Redbeacon
• Jeff Beard, President and GM, Localeze
• Rick Blair, CEO, Examiner.com
• Reed Brown, President and CEO, Matchbin
• Jim Delli Santi, Cofounder and CEO, AlikeList
• Craig Donato, CEO, Oodle
• Todd Dubner, Senior VP, Development, NCI
• Jennifer Dulski, CEO, Center’d
• Sean Fox, COO, Reply.com
• Jordan Glazier, CEO, Eventful
• Krista Glotzbach, VP, Marketing, Vast.com
• Martin Herbst, GM, Kijiji U.S., eBay
• Greg Isaacs, Executive Director and GM, AT&T Interactive
• Jaan Janes, CEO, Pulse 360
• Joelle Kaufman, Senior VP, Marketing, Adify
• Warren Kay, VP, Fox Audience Network
• David Kidder, Cofounder and CEO, Clickable
• Tony Lee, Chief Alliance Officer, Adicio
• Colin Pape, CEO, ShopCity.com
• Ben Saren, Cofounder and CEO, CitySquares
• Julie Smith, Group Product Manager, SuperMedia
• Mat Stover, CEO, Local Matters
• David Vazdauskas, President, Local Thunder

Do you think it will be a great conference? Do you think you can do major business? Please get more info here or sign up to register here. Rates are better in advance than at the door.

Monster Worldwide has bought HotJobs from Yahoo for $225 million. It will also be in charge of Yahoo’s recruitment content in North America for the next three years, bringing in perhaps another $100 million for the life of the deal from home page traffic, etc. As part of the deal, which closes in 3Q 2010, Monster also gets exclusive rights to negotiate similar arrangements with Yahoo’s overseas properties.

HotJobs has been on the market since Carol Bartz took over as CEO of Yahoo early last year (or even before). It hasn’t been clear if anyone would buy it for more than a fire-sale price. The deal’s price of $225 million does represent a significant discount from the $439 million that Yahoo paid in 2002, but it is more than some handicappers had been predicting.

The deal likely propels Monster well past Gannett’s CareerBuilder as the online recruitment leaders (by revenues). Lately, CareerBuilder’s lagging profits have become a drain on Gannett’s profits. Likewise, Monster today reported that 4Q revs were down 27 percent, and that it suffered a net loss of $2.1 million on 4Q revenues of $213 million.

For Yahoo, the deal is the latest in a series of selloffs. Notably, it sold its search business to Microsoft last year, has de-emphasized other areas such as shopping and small business, and has been rumored to put some of its other verticals in play as well.

HotJobs, of course, had been the original glue that brought Yahoo and the newspapers together. But the consortium has lately been focused more on using Yahoo’s APT behavioral targeting advertising platform. Some members of the consortium already use Monster.

Recruitment remains a huge category, but in recent years, has been challenged by the recession. It has also become a major battle zone driven by technologies, such as semantic search-and-match job listings, mapping and communities of interest. Indeed, a growing part of the market has moved to niche specialties, such as trade associations, etc. At the same time, ancillary verticals such as vocational education, relocation and job fairs have proved to be less important than once thought.