BilltoMobile is expanding its direct carrier billing relationship with Verizon Wireless to process transactions from other payment platforms starting with mobile payment start-up Boku.

http://pys.me/n8h

Your startup idea will probably fail. Get used to it. How about building what customers want? Heh, we wish it were that simple. Build a faster horse instead of a car and you’re dead. At the LA Start Up Camp, you’ll learn how to figure out what customers really want, and a product they will really use. In 56 hours, you’ll form a team with other participants and work on a new startup while competing for prizes, mentorship, and glory.

We are super happy to announce that we will be bring Start Up Camp back to LA this month. Entrepreneurs with ideas, designers, and developers can register now for $40 tickets, or follow our sponsors Tropo, or Ansca Mobile to win free tickets!

If you interested in speaking, or being a judge on DEMO Day, please email Tai Greene, and for sponsorship info checkout the sponsorship page.

A few weeks back, Adam Kalsey from Tropo introduced an exciting new piece of functionality on the Tropo platform – the ability to control a Tropo script by injecting events into a running session.

This type of functionality has lots of very cool applications – you can break a caller out of a long running process, or stop an executing action like a conference or a transfer. And what’s even cooler, now you can have access to all of this functionality through the existing Tropo WebAPI library for PHP.

Read the full article on the Tropo Blog

Like the headline says, a Corona-built game named Bubble Ball (which was our most recent App of the Week) just passed the free version of Angry Birds: Seasons on the App Store’s free apps chart. According to the developer — who is just 14 years old — the physics puzzle game has over a million downloads to date, and the download numbers haven’t even topped off yet.

We’ve been watching Bubble Ball climb the charts today. Heck, we were pretty excited when itreached #2, thinking it could never unseat the mighty Angry Birds. But then, just a few minutes ago, it hit the #1 spot!

Congratulations to developer Robert Nay on this achievement — we’ll be following up on this story with more details about his project and his future plans for it!

Here is what you should consider bringing with you:

Extension Cords and Power Bars
Whiteboard Markers
Sticky Notes
Sketch Book
Markers
Toothbrush if you plan to work all day
Sleeping bag in case you want to crash for a few hours

Google needs to buy a Groupon competitor because there isn’t any kind of special technology or secret methods involved in this business — if anything, it has virtually no barriers to entry whatsoever,

http://pys.me/n87

Cloud encoding startup Encoding.com is launching a new service that will make it even easier for publishers to encode a video once and serve it to multiple different devices with a single URL.

http://pys.me/n8B

Tropos’ municipal Wi-Fi concept made the leap to an all-inclusive smart grid communications solution. They are making everything from super-fast distribution automation gear to millions of smart meters.

http://pys.me/n8F