Food website Delish.com, operated jointly by Hearst Magazines Digital and MSN, have launched a social trivia game on Facebook called the Delish Challenge.

The Delish Challenge features more than 1,000 food-related questions that tests users knowledge as they work their way up the restaurant ladder from busser to executive chef.  Along the way users gather virtual goods, which can be traded with friends, including sushi knives, wine glasses and spicy chilies, Trivia topics include desserts, healthy cooking, comfort food and regional cuisines.

A federal judge has ruled that Google’s AdWords program does not infringe on trademarks owned by language learning company Rosetta Stone.

Almost every time a company is dragged into court, the process becomes a drain on its resources and isn’t great for PR (no matter how ridiculous the claims).  It’s perhaps understandable, then, that Facebook has acquired all of Friendster’s social networking patents and patent applications for a reported $40 million.

Google has apparently acquired yet another company – Instantiations. This is a provider of Java and Ajax development tools.

As MG Siegler (who first reported the news) points out, the company is known for its Google Web Toolkit designer, which is likely the reason for the acquisition.

Instantiations greets its site visitors with the following message:

IBM has partnered with the Industrial Design Centre at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay on mobile web research. The initiative will focus on development of new designs of mobile device interfaces that can be used by people who are semiliterate or illiterate, as well as individuals who have limited or no access to information technology.

The rate at which Facebook seals game-related deals may soon increase.  The social network’s current gaming partners may soon grow happier, too.  That’s because Facebook’s attempting to hire a "Head of Games Partnerships," and those will be among his (or her) top priorities.

Microsoft announced that it has settled the patent infringement cases it brought against Salesforce.com, and that the two companies have reached a patent agreement in which Salesforce will receive broad coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio for tis products and services. This will also apply to Salesforce’s back-end server infrastructure.

In addition, Microsoft gets coverage under Salesforce’s patent portfolio for Microsoft’s products and services.

Facebook announced that its privacy settings can be better controlled from anywhere you access the social network. They are rolling out mobile privacy settings via m.facebook.com/privacy. You can also go to the settings page and click "change" next to "privacy settings" from there.

It’s interesting that it’s taken this long to do so, considering how the privacy changes were launched back in May, but better late than never, I suppose.

A well-respected line of hotels is entrusting at least part of its customers’ experience to Microsoft.  Sheraton Hotels & Resorts announced today that a new online destination, dubbed the "Sheraton Guest Portal," will be powered by Bing.

This arrangement is supposed to go well beyond putting the Sheraton logo somewhere on a modified version of the Bing homepage.  It isn’t meant to result in some one-size-fits-all site for all of the Sheratons around the world, either.

MySpace appears to be working on a new feature that could help give it a much-needed boost in consumer enthusiasm. From the sound of it, it’s almost like Digg meets the Facebook News feed (or Reddit meets Twitter, if you’d rather look at it that way).

Either way, it involves users voting content up and down, while giving them a way to tap into updates on topics of interest.

Google has announced that it is rolling out AdWords Campaign Experiments to all U.S. advertisers. This is a free tool that the company says makes it easier to test and measure the impact of changes to keywords, bids, ad groups, and placements.

Chitika has provided some very interesting search market-related findings. According to the firm, Firefox is responsible for a significant amount of Google’s share. In fact, based on the sample looked at, there were more Firefox-based Google searches than total searches from Bing or Yahoo.

It’s important to note that this isn’t representative of the entire search market, but it’s an interesting finding that may indeed have bigger implications in that market.

The NPD Group has released a new smartphone report, finding that Motorola and HTC have driven Android to the lead in the U.S. Android is installed on one in three smartphones sold, according to the group.

Meanwhile, for the first time since 2007, RIM has slid to the number 2 position, as Android took the lead.

While Android accounted for 33% of all smartphones purchased in Q2, RIM accounted for 28%. Apple came in third at 22% with the launch of the iPhone 4.

Update: After several weeks of pubic preview, the new photo pages are now being rolled out to everyone.

Original Article: Flickr has launched a new photo page. Some elements of the page have been enlarged, or "embiggened" as Flickr puts it. Photos are now displayed in a bigger 640 pixel width and the photo page itself is wider.

As the world waits for Google TV to be unleashed this holiday season, Yahoo is doing its best to remind consumers that it already has a foot firmly in the space. The company did so when Google made its announcement, and now on the heels of a survey released by iSuppli last week, they’re at it again.

Update: It appears there are some people out there that would pay to use Twitter if they had to. MG Siegler points to a survey from film critic Roger Ebert who would pay for Twitter, along with about 20% of his followers. Make of that what you will.

Intel announced that it has reached a tentative settlement with the FTC in the antitrust suit the FTC brought against the company in December.

The suit alleged that Intel had violated Section 5 of the FTC Act. In this settlement, Intel does not admit any violations. Intel SVP and General Counsel Doug Melamed offered the following statement:

Vonage has launched a new mobile app for calling Facebook friends. Users can make free mobile calls to their Facebook friends who also run the app (anywhere in the world). This can be done right from their friends list with one touch.

A quiet company that has been focused on "empowering consumers to make media relevant" will now become part of LinkedIn.  LinkedIn announced this morning that it will acquire Pittsburgh-based mSpoke for an unspecified amount.

mSpoke has operated somewhat under the radar for a while.  The company’s most recent blog post was written on October 11th of last year, and its most recent press release was published on February 4th, 2008.  LinkedIn’s interested in all aspects of the organization, though.

So-called content farms draw a lot of criticism for a supposed lack of quality and some consider them a threat to quality on the web in general. We’re talking about entities like Demand Media, Associated Content, the new AOL, etc. (the definition of the term content farm itself is also debated).

Microsoft announced that it has completed the roll out of its new Hotmail experience. All customers have now been upgraded.

Google and Yelp have had some issues for sometime, following a failed acquisition attempt, but it’s rare that the tensions between the two companies are aired for an audience. That is just what happened at TechCrunch’s Social Currency Crunchup event.

Pandora has updated its site to make it easier for users to find and adjust their privacy settings. Given that Pandora was a launch partner for Facebook’s Open Graph initiative, which set off a huge wave of privacy concerns, this is probably a good idea, if not a bit late.

Advertisers have begun to divert – or even throw – much more money Facebook’s way, according to one of the company’s top execs.  COO Sheryl Sandberg indicated in an interview that some large organizations have increased their spending ten- or twentyfold in the last year.