Mobile carrier NTT Docomo today announced a move in its strategy to grow its content business outside of its traditional base of Japan: it issued a tender offer to acquire Buongiorno, a mobile content company based in Italy, paying up to ¥24 billion ($300 million) for the assets. Docomo notes in a statement that the acquisition would be made by its Germany-based subsidiary, Docomo Deutschland, and that Maruo del Rio, Buongiorno’s majority shareholder and chairman with 20 percent of Buongiorno’s stock, has already agreed to sell his stake to the carrier. The deal would see Buongiorno become a subsidiary of NTT Docomo

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NTT Docomo Will Pay Up To $300M To Buy Italian Mobile Content Company Buongiorno

Zynga has picked up the team behind Wild Needle, a female-focused casual games company that was backed by Playdom co-founder Rick Thompson .

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Zynga Picks Up Mobile Gaming Startup Wild Needle In A Talent Deal

With $450K behind it in funding, Israeli-based Qmerce is helping business large and small add social games to their communities, particularly on Facebook.

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Qmerce Brings Brand-Customizable Social Games to Facebook

Livebookings , the restaurant booking and marketing service that competes with services like OpenTable, is announcing today that it has picked up another $24 million (£15 million) in funding to continue growing its business in Europe and beyond. The news highlights two trends we’ve seen emerging recently around here: companies dedicated to eating out are not going hungry in the current economic climate; and the more local, European counterparts to U.S.-based tech companies are getting a lot of attention from investors and consumers.

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Europe’s ‘OpenTable’ Livebookings Eats Up Another $24M From Balderton, Wellington, Ekstranda

Editor’s note: Andy Hickl is the co-founder and CEO of A.R.O ., a stealth mode Seattle startup. He previously served as CEO and chief scientist of Language Computer Corporation and as co-founder and CEO of Swingly

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Companion Is The New Assistant

Editor’s note: Sunil Rajaraman is the co-founder and CEO of Scripted.com , a marketplace for businesses to hire freelance writers. Follow him on Twitter @subes01 . When I talk to my friends who are not currently at startups, or the Silicon Valley, the perception is that VCs and individual investors are throwing around investment dollars like drunken sailors.

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How To Raise A $1M Seed Round

Very rarely do we see gaming startups launch on the rather limited platform of SMS.

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StrayBoots CEO Discusses Making $12 Per Game, And It’s Only On SMS!

Some people just love Google+ and others just hate the company’s efforts to create a social network and a social layer across all of its services. Google itself seems to be pretty happy with the results it is getting from Google+ so far – or at least that’s what the company is saying publicly.

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With Its New Google+ iPhone App, Google Finally Gets It Right

Well, after days and days of nothing, suddenly things are moving at a fast clip.

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No More Beating Around The Bush At Yahoo: Thompson Is Out, Levinsohn In As CEO, Effective Immediately

We’re still confirming the news with Yahoo but AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher is reporting that as of tomorrow, Scott Thompson will be leaving his role as CEO of Yahoo, and getting replaced, on an interim basis, by Ross Levinsohn, currently the global media head. Thompson’s position has been mired in controversy since news broke the other week that he had lied about his qualifications — and that situation seemed to be going from bad to worse as the company failed to act on the news in any significant way — and Thompson remained in control.

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Report: Thompson Out, Media Man Levinsohn In As Yahoo’s Interim CEO