Brightkite has teamed with McDonalds and Visa to power a unique rewards program centered around checking-in to McDonalds locations to earn a $5 Visa gift card.

Following similar programs with brands like Starbucks, The CW, Sharpie and Dentyne, this rewards campaign marks the largest brand play to date for Brightkite.  McDonald’s and Visa got together to launch the ‘Easy’ badge for Brightkite users to earn by checking in to their nearest McDonalds.  The first 500 people to earn the badge  receive a $5 Visa gift card, courtesy of Visa and Brightkite.

To highlight the campaign, Brightkite is also running a location and activity targeted ad campaign that launches an on-screen spinner that highlights the McDonald’s dollar menu.  The Brightkite campaign is integrated with other media including online and out-of-home.

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Mobile is immensely popular in India, as evident in new figures out by SMS GupShup that indicate the text-based social network has reached 35 million total users while adding over 1 million each and every month.

These figures show SMS GupShup surpassed July traffic on Facebook (with 21 million unique visitors) and Orkut (with 20 million unique visitors) — two social networks who have long fought for social dominance in the region.  Granted, SMS GupShup differs, but it shows mobile’s dominance in India.

There are roughly 550 million mobile phone users in the country and only 50 million web users, according to the company.  With a 10 to 1 mobile-to-PC ratio and SMS serving as the most popular communications platform, the market is ripe for SMS GupShup to take off, which it obviously already has.  The startup currently processes more than 500 million messages a month and accounts for over 5 percent of all texts sent within India.

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NBC Universal Digital Studio has teamed with human-powered answering service ChaCha for a unique mobile engagement initiative for NBC’s new “FCU: Fact Checker’s Unit” series.

The series, based on a short film of the same name, follows two overzealous fact checkers employed to confirm or disprove various statements made in articles scheduled to be published by a magazine.  Viewers and fans can participate by joining the show’s mobile alerts and “Check Your Own Facts” by texting ChaCha on the show’s site and engage more deeply with the content by experiencing a live feed of fact checking questions.

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There’s big news for SMS marketing in Latin American countries today, as the “Latin America Common Short Code” initiative announced in March by the CTIA has gone live.  The initiative provides a much-needed centralized CSC registry process for all of Latin America — a high-growth region in terms of mobile technology.

The initiative is supported by all major operators in the region and uses technology provided by Syniverse Technologies, a company that provides a wealth of telecommunication services to over 800 mobile operators, ISPs and other enterprises around the world.  Syniverse has built a short code system that every single operator in Latin America can tap into that provides 6-digit short codes that work the same in any country, as long as your operator is part of the CSC initiative.  With the new system in place, marketers will be able to reach an additional 500 million people within Latin American countries.

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With heat like New York’s been having, it’s not to early to dream about skiing and snowboarding, especially when mobile technology will let winter athletes engage more closely than ever with each other–and their resorts.

Vail Resorts announced today that this coming season, it will deploy mobile a mobile strategy called EpicMix. The plan consists of a mobile application as well as RF (radio frequency) chips embedded in lift tickets, season passes, and the lifts themselves at the company’s Vail, Beavercreek, Breckenridge, Keystone and Heavenly resorts. EpicMix lets guests track the distance they’ve gone down the slopes; announce when and where they are on the mountain, and meet up with friends via private messaging; share blow-by-blow accounts in real-time via Facebook and Twitter; and even win “rewards” from the resort, in the form of collectible pins, based on their activities.

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Shakey’s Pizza Parlor recently partnered with Options Media Group on a comprehensive text messaging initiative to drive foot-traffic to its restaurants and encourage mobile opt-ins using a three-month test program targeting 30 stores in Southern California.

The campaign encouraged users to send a text message to Shakey’s to receive a mobile coupon good for a large pizza.  After the short pilot program in just 30 of its stores, Shakey’s was able to build a significant database of over 16,000 people who responded to the initial promotion.  Customers responded to in-store advertisements as well as Shakey’s ads placed throughout the location’s respective communities.  A follow-up campaign resulted in a 10% conversion rate of customers who used their text coupon to buy a pizza during a one day special offer sent to Shakey’s mobile subscribers.

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Intel is on the move in the mobile space.

On Monday, it was announced that Intel is shelling out $1.4 billion to purchase the wireless division of Infineon, a major component supplier for laptop and mobile devices, the most famous of which is the iPhone.

According to MarketWatch, the purchase strongly relates to integral mobile and wireless technologies like Wi-Fi, 3G, WiMAX and LTE.

Among the initially assumed and ultimately stated reasons for Intel’s acquisition is that the company is admittedly eager to diversify beyond its core business of providing computer chips. To say that “this market is softening” would , in fact, be an understatement.

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