Here's your chance to score some half-price Starbucks coffee and do a good deed.

Google Offers is offering a daily deal on a $10 electronic Starbucks gift card.

A few of you have waited until the last minute for some of your Valentine's Day details. You are not alone, but thanks to technology you can still manage to sweeten the day.

Maybe they're being subjected to cruelty by PowerPoint, or on their way to get a shot of caffeine between tasks, but it seems many are plotting their Valentine's Day agenda on the go.

Be it a reservation or a bouquet, the Internet can transform you from a clueless zero to a romantic hero - especially via a mobile device.

Renea Nelson, owner of Every Bloomin' Thing in Cary, says she noticed a surge in online sales starting about 18 months ago which mirrors the intensifying growth in smartphone and tablet market.

It is not just the hardware evolution that accounts for the growth. Apps, sophisticated interfaces like Siri, and local search results optimized with location details and extras like Google's click to call.

Click to call is Google's mobile-specific ad that lets a user simply click the number to call a business.

When asked to "order flowers" Siri responded, "for me?" Well even though they weren't, Siri provided nearly 20 local options within a 3-mile radius. It's that easy.

One tip that Nelson urges is for consumers to keep it local by ordering directly through a seller near you rather than a national service. Ordering by phone or online directly with a local florist just might save you money and get you better service. An an ordering experiment by The Consumer Warning Network verifies this.

Google's plan to integrate its Google+ social network into its search results has Twitter on the defensive.

Called "Search Plus Your World," Google's new search culls through Google+ data to deliver more personal search results.

In a statement Twitter said, "We're concerned that as a result of Google's changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that's bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users."

A post from Google volleys that Twitter can't be too surprised. This is appears to be the fallout of Twitter choosing not to renew their agreement with Google. Remember Google's Realtime Search that churned up tweets?
 

Apple rather quietly launched its new music cloud service iTunes Match on Monday.

Costing $25 per year, the cloud service is supposed to make every song in a subscriber's iTunes library available online.

Matched songs can then be streamed or downloaded. To sign up for the service, users must update to iTunes 10.5.1.

Some attempting to subscribe were thwarted by messages that said the service was unavailable due to demand and were asked to check back later. There are also a few reports of iTunes Match not recognizing some songs among a few other complaints.

Meanwhile, Google has been preparing for a launch of its own. An announcement is set for Wednesday where Bloomberg reports Google is launching its own music store.
 

YouTube Via RedmondPie

Gov. Bev Perdue said Monday that Facebook is expanding its data center in Forest City. The governor will be touring the site this afternoon.

Facebook announced the $450 million data center last winter and said at the time that it might expand depending on business needs.

The first data center is expected to open in 2012 at the site, southeast of Asheville.
More there 30 people work at the site full-time and the company plans to add 10 more as part of its expansion, according to the governor's office.

Data centers typically are not large employers — though the construction of the buildings have created several hundred jobs.

In announcing the expansion, Perdue's office said that more than 1,500 people have worked on the site so far.

“We believe the expanding operations and continued construction activities will have a positive impact on Rutherford County’s economy,” George Henry, Facebook Data Center Manager, said in a statement.

Western North Carolina is also home to Google's $600 million data center and Apple's $1 billion data center.
 

Google celebrates its 13th year today. Part of the celebration is the birthday-themed doodle on its site featuring a Google party diorama complete with cake and balloons.

In the 13 years Google has grown to nearly 30,000 employees, reported over $9 billion from the previous quarter, and recently purchased mobile hardware maker Motorola Mobility.

The company has pushed innovations including Android for smartphones and tablets, Google Wallet, Google TV, Google Voice, driverless cars, Chromebooks and become the standard for online mapping services.

Google has patented its doodles.

Internet search giant Google talked up its partnership with Duke University today in a blog post detailing the company's efforts to reduce its carbon footprint.

Google seeks out green projects to offset the greenhouse gas emissions its operations produce.

Among those projects is a hog farm in Yadkin County where the Duke Carbon Offsets Initiative has built a waste management system that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and produces electricity.

"Through this pilot, Duke is showing how these projects can make economic sense for North Carolinians and lead to dramatic reductions in emissions over the long term," wrote Jolanka Nickerson, the program manager for Google's Carbon Offsets Team. "We hope technologies like this can scale across the U.S. and world."

Google, like other Internet companies, has been criticized by some environmentalists for the amount of electricity it uses and how much greenhouse gases it is responsible for producing.
 

Google has made planning a trip a bit easier by adding a weather layer. You can read more at Google's Blog or watch the video below.

YouTube link

Paying $12.5 billion, Google is acquiring mobile phone maker Motorola Mobility at $40 per share, 63 percent over its price at closing on Friday.

In a statement released Monday morning, Google CEO Larry Page says that the deal with "supercharge the entire Android ecosystem."

The acquisition should help Google's Android compete better with Apple, and stem what competition could emerge from the Microsoft-Nokia marriage.

Will Google be making moves to make Android development more like Apple's iOS referred to as "the walled garden" by critics? Fragmentation has been one of Android's gowing pains, but Google maintains that Android will remain open.

While Android may edge Apple's iOS on the pie charts in those monthly mobile OS surveys, it is done with dozens of Android devices from several makers. With rumors of Apple manuevering and its next iPhone volley into the market, the only better timing for Google to buy Motorola would have been sooner.