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Ambient location app Highlight is a big deal. Eldon likes it , Scoble likes it, MG and Mike like it and Grindr fan Charlie Cheever likes it.

Fresh with new funding, Buddy Media, a company that provides Facebook Page and social media management tools to brands, is launching ConversionBuddy, a data and analytics platform for brand marketers. Buddy Media provides an all-in-one social media management system to help create, manage and track social campaigns on Facebook

Three days ago I wrote about Codecademy — a slick, fun way to teach yourself how to program. The app has done an excellent job minimizing the frustration often associated with writing your first lines of code, and it sports a good-looking and intuitive interface. Another plus: the initial signup flow doesn’t show up til you’ve completed your first few lessons, so you’re writing code within a few seconds of landing at Codecademy.com.

Stipple , a technology that allows you to tag people in images no matter where they reside on the web, has launched a platform today that serves as an ‘Adsense for Images.’ For background, Stipple’s technology allows publishers to tag a person in a photo on the web, enter contextual information such as a Twitter name or Facebook name and then anyone can see their most recent social updates as overlays on that picture. But Stipple also partners with e-commerce sites to provide a way for each photo to show exactly what piece of clothing the person in the photo is wearing — to show you who makes it, how much it costs, and where to buy it.

William Shatner, rejoice ! Earlier today, Wen-Ai Yu from the Google+ team announced with a post on Google+ and an accompanying YouTube video that the social network now boasts ‘verification badges’ for celebrities, public figures, but also people who have been added to an (undefined) ‘large’ number of Circles, with the promise to expand the verified profile system in the near future.

Developer and HackerNews contributor Jeremy Keeshin has stumbled across the scariest thing I’ve seen all day (I live in San Francisco, okay). In searching for ways to make his own site  search auto-complete superfast, like Facebook’s, Keesh came across a file titled first_degree.php, which revealed that Facebook has a ranking for the people who you’re probably searching for on Facebook.

The basics: Google is buying Motorola, pending government approval. Everyone and their editor-at-large has written about it. Now I’ll take my shot at the soapbox

Digital loyalty startup Chatterfly today launched its new rewards program for businesses and consumers in the form of a smartphone application for iPhone and Android. Like similar startups, including the now Google-owned Punchd , Chatterfly aims to replace the paper loyalty card with a more modern, digital version.

Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, just delivered a terrific opening keynote presentation for LinuxCon. Whitehurst isn’t just a businessman, he’s also a geek

Google’s Slide team has been busy.