Some more consolidation afoot in the worlds of mobile marketing and mobile payments: Payvia, one of the many startups working in the area of carrier-based mobile billing, is buying Mogreet, a mobile marketing company that delivers campaigns via text, video and picture messaging services. Terms of the deal were not disclosed — although we have contacted the company to ask. Payvia says that the whole of the Mogreet team will be coming over, including Mogreet founder and CEO James Citron, who will become Payvia’s Chief Marketing Officer.

The move is an interesting one, in that it signals how Payvia, to differentiate itself from the pack, is creating applications itself that utilize its payment services.

“Our mobile payments offer resonates strongly with the market because it is built on our proprietary carrier connected technology that gives us a unique ability to understand consumer mobile usage,” said Darcy Wedd, CEO, payvia, in a statement. “Our clients have told us they also need a simpler way to link targeted mobile transactions to their marketing campaigns. By integrating Mogreet’s solutions on our platform we answer that need. As the only company to solve a known disconnect between traditional mobile commerce and engagement solutions, Payvia is well positioned to increase mobile’s share of the $252 billion* e-commerce market.”

A new report commissioned by research giant GfK claims that the growth of the high density cluster of technology companies in East London (dubbed Tech City by the UK government) is being “stunted” by a talent shortage and lack of access to capital. The ‘Tech Futures Report’ – commissioned by publishing company TechCityInsider and sponsored by accountant Grant Thornton, recruitment firm Vitamin T, City University London and Digital Shoreditch is based on 141 interviews of ‘tech’ company senior management. In fact, only less than half of these admitted to developing technology products and platforms. It’s simply the latest in a long line of reports that conflate consultants and digital advertising agencies with technology companies, leading to yet more confusion about the state of the cluster.

When quizzed by TechCrunch, the reports authors admitted that only 41% of those surveyed made apps, while 21% did social networking, 17% retailing/ecommerce, 12% publishing, 12% IT consulting and services, 8% data processing/management and 7% were in gaming – though it’s not clear whether than meant games or gambling. And of those 141, only 77% of respondents were CEO/Founders of the business they represented.

As a result of this over-sight, an important opportunity has been missed to find out more of the needs of real high-growth technology companies in the cluster, rather than normal growth advertising agencies.

There’s no shortage of channels for brands and celebrities to stay in touch with their customers, followers and fans in these socially connected times — whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Vine, YouTube, you name it. Of course, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for something more. Today’s addition to the mix is the launch of a broadcasting and animation platform for smartphones called Headcast which lets brands and celebrities record and push out short voice messages to their audience — accompanied by an animated, virtual avatar which lipsyncs with the voice recording and can also mimic hand gestures and facial expressions.

The company behind the tech, HeadcastLab, describes these broadcasts as “visual tweets” since they are limited in duration to 60 seconds, so have the same bite-sized character as a tweet, but are also designed to be watched, thanks to the avatar component. There’s no getting away from the uncanny valley phenomenon here, but presumably in an effort to make that effect comic rather than sinister, the avatars have a cartoonish air, rather than going after exact photo-realism.

The cartoonish air can also be explained by HeadcastLab’s CEO’s background as a designer and builder of puppets and characters. Chris Chapman also ran the animatronics team at Spitting Image Projects and went on to join the creative team. HeadcastLab was founded in 2011, after Chapman had also co-founded smart interface business ElekSen.

The news that Google has launched its own all-you-can-eat music steaming service, catchily named ‘Google Play Music All Access‘, didn’t come as a surprise. There had been rumours that the search giant was planning to create a Spotify/Rdio/Deezer competitor for some time. Why has it done so? Apparently it had to. Music is at the centre of the mobile computing experience, which is where Google wants to remain.

And yet — and yet — it appears to have brought nothing new to the music streaming table. Certainly from a consumer proposition, Google Play Access All Areas looks just like Spotify et al, right down to the business model and pricing. This from the company that’s bringing us self-driving cars.

It’s therefore nice to see a startup trying something different and garnering some promising traction along the way. The UK’s Bloom.fm is a mobile-first music streaming service — it currently exists as an iOS app only — that launched four months ago out of the ashes of the deadpooled music social network mflow. Since then the service, which offers an innovative mix of free and paid tiers that start from just £1 per-month (~$1.5), has amassed 150,000 subscribers, growing 50% in the last month — though, tellingly, it isn’t saying how many are free versus paid users.

Jolla, the Finnish MeeGo startup composed of ex-Nokians building their own mobile hardware and Sailfish OS, has finally taken the wraps off its first handset, revealing what the hardware will look like on its website. The design is a clean-looking, elegant slab, with the most stand-out feature being the coloured shell on the back that wraps around half the sides of the phone to create a dual-tone sandwich effect.

The shell colours, which appear to be user-customisable, can also influence the theme colours of the Sailfish UI. This is a feature Jolla is calling “the Other Half”. “Attach the Other Half and your Jolla becomes alive and unique,” the text notes. “Magically, the software changes to match your selected colour and design. Your Ambience. Your Jolla.” It’s unclear exactly what technology is linking hardware and software but it sounds like it could be NFC.

The removable, customisable shells bring to mind Nokia’s Lumia 820 — a device for which Nokia has released the 3D print files so owners of 3D printers can  design and print their own custom shell. The Lumia 820 shells, however, do not have any link to the Windows Phone software.

Ok, admittedly, the headline is a slight misrepresentation. However, in the best online dating tradition, not only did it hopefully catch your attention but it has more than a grain of truth, too.

YouLike, a startup backed by the founders of Turkish eBay clone GittiGidiyor (which in 2011 was acquired by the online auction giant for $217 million), describes itself as an interest-based social network and dating site that takes into account a user’s dislikes, as much as what they do like, when helping to find like-minded people to friend or date.

Unlike a lot of other dating sites that ask you to fill out a lengthy and data-heavy questionnaire or simply pen an open-ended profile, YouLike presents a series of fun questions ranging from what activities you love or hate, your food and entertainment tastes, or your relationship preferences. Each question requires a simple multiple choice response — “love”, “like”, “dislike”, “hate”, or “skip” — which forms the basis for how YouLike matches users.