Here are the highlights from the TKG blog last week, in case you missed any posts. Click below to read each post in full.

Here Comes the GPhone, Part IV

Early rumors of a Google phone, before the Android platform was announced, gave the device a name of “GPhone” (remember?). That name ended up being not that far off the mark — though Google ended up building the OS rather than the hardware. Reports are swirling today that T-Mobile will be the first to offer a phone that runs Android — a smartphone to be released Sept. 17, named “G1.” (read more…)

Cox to Sell Most of its Papers, Valpak

Cox Enterprises has announced that it is putting most of its newspapers on the block, as well as Valpak, its direct mail giant. Newspapers, TV and radio currently now make up just 20 percent of the company’s revenues as it has diversified with cable TV and holdings such as AutoTrader and Manheim auto auctions, and the Adify ad network, which it purchased in April for $300 million. In 2007, the company had earnings of $15 billion and employed 83,000 people. (read more…)

Virtual Earth Marks the Spot With ‘Mapvertising’

Windows Virtual Earth evangelist Chris Pendleton writes on his blog about the availability of display advertising on Live Search Maps. Known as “highlighted listings,” this is similar to the mapvertising Google Maps offers. Both place icons on map locations — sort of a premium placement beyond an organic map listing. Icons also show up whenever users are within a certain area of a map, at certain zoom levels. Lat49 has built on a similar offering. (read more…)

Sensis Bucks Trends With Strong Print Results

Australia’s Sensis released its results for the financial year ended June 30, and many in the global Yellow Pages industry will be interested to find that print revenues are growing in Australia, bucking a global trend of often steep declines. (read more…)

Centro Buys Real Cities Brand From McClatchy

Real Cities, the national ad network owned by McClatchy, has been sold to fast rising Centro. Or at least, the Real Cities brand has been sold, along with access to Real Cities’ list of 250 national advertisers. The network’s local media affiliates, however, which are mostly newspapers, aren’t included. (read more…)

Something Funny Happened While Watching TBS

Last night, while watching reruns of The Office on TBS, I noticed something peculiar. During a commercial break, one of the network’s stand-up comedy shows was advertised. The “bit” being performed had to do with the female comic’s wish that picking out things in life (outfits, men, etc.) was as easy as the interactivity offered on Cars.com. My suspicions were realized when the subsequent commercial was a Cars.com spot. (read more…)

Matchpoint Evolves Ad Product, Integrates Widgets

Matchpoint will soon be rolling out a new set of ad products to complement its flagship online lead-gen forms. On its own site, it will integrate more of an IYP setup with searchable business listings. With each search results page, a lead-gen form will be offered that is germane to the category searched. (read more…)

Yahoo Fire Eagle Takes Flight

Yahoo Brickhouse division-head Tom Coates officially launched the Fire Eagle platform today to a packed room of San Francisco journalists, analysts and bloggers (and Yahoo cofounder David Filo). The platform, in beta since March, is based on managing users’ location data to make online services smarter and more relevant to them. It basically does this by tying into a variety of location aware devices and services to update a user’s location. (read more…)

Apple’s App Store: Hot or Not?

The iPhone App Store is kicking butt to the tune of $1 million in sales per day ($30 million to date) and 60 million total downloads. This from an article put out yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, based on an exclusive interview with Steve Jobs. But a few contrarian viewpoints have since emerged from venerable online sources such as TechCrunch and GigaOm (adding to last week’s analysis of a similar question: have we jumped the shark with iPhone apps?). (read more…)

Classified Ventures’ Value Down 13% to $338 Million

Classified Ventures, the holding company for Cars.com, Homescape, Apartments.com, RentalHomesPlus and HomeGain that is jointly owned by McClatchy, A.H. Belo Corp., Gannett Co., Tribune Co. and The Washington Post Co. is now valued at $338 million. The valuation, contained in a 10-K filed by McClatchy, is 13 percent below the $382 million at which the company was valued in December 2007. (read more…)