Klout purchased neighborhood interaction app Blockboard.

“Blockboard has built an amazing local-mobile app that connects neighbors to build stronger communities through technology,” says Klout’s Joe Fernandez.

This simple, well-designed tool gives people a way to communicate with their neighbors about everything from local news and tips to lost pets and broken streetlights.

“With their experience, Blockboard brings an awareness of how social media can be meaningfully woven into the fabric of a local community,” he adds, “as well as a killer mobile app development team.”

Klout says that integrating the Blockboard team, technology and expertise represents a “significant investment into enriching the local and mobile experience” for the company’s users.

Per the terms of the deal, which weren’t disclosed in full, Blockboard’s entire staff will be joining Klout.

“We can’t wait to get started!,” Fernandez said Tuesday.

Persistent Systems, if you’re unfamiliar, offers a variety of contemporary and cutting edge clients solutions including cloud computing, mobility, analytics and collaboration services to hundreds of businesses across the globe.

The announced acquisition, about which financial terms were not disclosed, did not come as a great shock given the close and productive working relationship Persistent and Openwave have shared for the last ten years.

“We are excited to acquire Openwave’s Location business,” said Dr. Anand Deshpande, Chairman, Managing Director and CEO of Persistent Systems. “Persistent has a decade long relationship with Openwave that has culminated in this transaction. We welcome the Openwave Location team to the Persistent family.”

“We are looking forward to continuing to provide excellent services to Openwave’s Location customers,” adds Hari Haran, President of Persistent Systems. “This acquisition builds on Persistent’s momentum in growing product maintenance and support services.”

In 2008, Velti acquired 33 percent of CASEE, which was founded just two years previously. At the time, the ownership stake enabled Velti to execute campaigns for global brands in China, a move that helped the company form an important piece of its global expansion strategy.

According to details released Monday, Velti paid approximately $8.4 million in cash for the remaining interest in CASEE.

But the same week that Velti is welcoming the addition of the entire CASEE team, Velti is simultaneously bidding farewell to Jerry Goldstein who is retiring after serving as a member of the Company’s Board of Directors since 2006.

“On behalf of the Board and the Company, I thank Jerry for his many years of distinguished service to Velti and his tireless efforts to help position the Company for success,” said Alex Moukas, Chief Executive Officer of Velti. “Jerry has long been a valued adviser to the Company, and we wish him only the best in his retirement.”

If you’re unfamiliar, Summify is all about summarizing all the social news that matters to you.

In a nutshell, Summify aggregates social media updates and announcements within a user’s timeline. Summaries of all the big news can then be delivered via email, the web, or even mobile app.

“You’ve probably noticed we’ve been quiet lately,” the Summify team announced on its blog Thursday. “Well, we’re extremely excited to announce that Summify has been acquired by Twitter! I know, right? We can hardly believe it ourselves!”

“Roughly 2 years ago,” the post added, “we moved from Romania to Vancouver after being accepted into Bootup Labs, an awesome startup incubator. It has been an incredible journey, with lots of highs, a few lows, and many product iterations. In March 2011 we launched our email summary product and we’ve been blown away by the response ever since. Many of our users tell us we found a magical solution to a truly unsolved problem.”

“Our long-term vision at Summify has always been to connect people with the most relevant news for them, in the most time efficient manner. As hundreds of millions of people worldwide are signing up and consuming Twitter, we realized it’s the best platform to execute our vision at a truly global scale. Since Twitter shared this vision with us, joining the company made perfect sense.

With Twitter’s 100 million user base (half of which is engaged via mobile devices), the acquisition seems like a fitting and timely move for the microblogging king of the social media world.

For Constant Contact, the acquisition isn’t a small one. With over two million users, Boston-based CardStar is a leading developer of mobile applications that extend the use of loyalty cards and mobile coupons among consumers.

According to Constant Contact, this newest acquisition will help the company continue to expand from a simple online marketing tool provider to a more sophisticated platform to help small businesses create and grow customer relationships.

As of this writing, no financial details of the transaction were revealed.

“The CardStar loyalty platform takes advantage of the anytime, anywhere nature of mobile – making it an excellent complement to our growing suite of engagement marketing tools for small businesses. CardStar’s unique mobile application is a natural extension of our brand, bringing consumers and merchants together before, during, and after the sale to help drive repeat business,” said Gail Goodman, CEO of Constant Contact.

CardStar’s employees will join the Constant Contact team, including CEO and Founder Andy Miller and CTO and Founder Danny Espinoza.

“We share a common goal of supporting businesses’ ability to grow by connecting with their customers,” Miller said today. “We are so pleased with CardStar’s success so far. Joining forces with Constant Contact accelerates our growth path and opens up new opportunities for small businesses to take advantage of our innovations in mobile, loyalty, and consumer technology.”

Hailed as one of the industry’s top mobile game development teams, Escalation Studios will join 6L’s existing product development team and according to details provided in today’s announcement “will focus on delivering cutting edge game experiences on mobile devices.”

“We will double our business in 2012 and mobile will play a significant role in our growth on both the publishing and development sides of our business,” said Rex Ng, CEO of 6L. “This addition to our team brings some of the mobile gaming industry’s most impressive talent into our fold and sends a clear signal that we are as serious about innovation in mobile as we have been in social.”

The addition of Escalation Studios expands the company’s workforce to more than 200 employees worldwide.

“We were initially interested in Escalation Studios because of their reputation within the industry,” said Arjun Sethi, Chief Product Officer of 6L. “When we sat down and saw their roadmap we recognized immediately how deeply their goals and capabilities align with our own. Their addition to our team will enable us to launch some of 2012′s most innovative mobile games.”

At the time of the acquisition’s announcement, terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Apple has acquired Anobit Technologies Ltd., an Israeli company that manufactures a flash-memory drive part for the iPhone and iPad.

As the world’s largest buyer of NAND flash memory, the acquisition puts Apple in a better financial position to maintain and accelerate its appetite for that which Anobit makes.

Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Apple, confirmed that the purchase took place, although he opted to skip any relevant financial details.

“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” Dowling told Bloomberg.

Israel, with a population similar in size to Switzerland’s at 7.7 million, has about 60 companies traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market, the most of any nation outside North America after China. Israel is also home to the largest number of startups per capita in the world.

Industry chatter suggests that Apple reportedly paid $400 – $500 million for Anobit, although neither party will address that speculation.

WalmartLabs, the upstart social and mobile product incubator at Wal-Mart, has acquired a company called Small Society.

A mobile-centric firm, Small Society is responsible for numerous highly iPhone applications for leading brands like Starbucks, Zipcar and Whole Foods.

While the terms of the deal weren’t initially made public, the outcome of the deal should soon be clear to Wal-Mart customers. Without a doubt, the mobile shopping experience will be getting a definitive boost in some fashion.

“We believe that mobile can have an impact on every part of the shopping experience for Walmart customers, whether in-store or online,” WalmartLabs chief Anand Rajaraman said. “We’re very excited to have such talented new team members to help us make that impact.”

Other 2011 WalmartLabs’ acquisitions included social ad network One Riot and mobile point-of-sale startup Gabble.

On Wednesday, Call Genie – a global solutions provider in mobile local search and mobile digital interactive advertising – announced it is moving ahead with plans to acquire the assets of VoodooVox, Inc., a US-based data analytics and mobile advertising network.

Based on the details made available in the acquisition’s announcement, the acquisition is intended to enable Call Genie to “further expand its diverse product offering and move deeper into the rapidly expanding mobile advertising market.”

The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of next month with Call Genie issuing 11.25 million shares to VoodooVox shareholders and paying another $1.8 million in cash over time.

If you’re unfamiliar, VoodooVox provides real-time demographic information on phone calls and mobile ad traffic.

Call Genie expects to deploy the VoodooVox Analytics product in an effort to further strengthen its position in Pay Per Call advertising.

“The more pay per call advertisers know about their callers, the more success they’ll have with their campaigns,” says Michael Durance, President and CEO of Call Genie. “Our goal is to create a smarter mobile ad network, and VoodooVox gives us audience insights that benefit key stakeholders in the mobile advertising ecosystem.”

“VoodooVox has assembled an impressive 300M record phone directory of individuals and businesses,” J. Scott Hamilton, President and CEO of VoodooVox added. “We have paid particular attention to mobile phone numbers, and believe we have created the reference data source for rich demographic information on cell phone numbers. Through our library of APIs, this information source can be easily integrated into carrier platforms and mobile ad serving networks.”

If you’re unfamiliar, Nuance is a leading provider of voice and language solutions for global businesses and consumers. Making the acquisition understandable is the fact that Vlingo is a virtual assistant that “turns words into action” by combining voice to text technology.

According to a joint press release this morning, the companies indicate tha they will “combine their deep innovation and R&D expertise to deliver next-generation natural language interfaces across numerous markets and industries.”

Consumer interest and demand for virtual assistant and voice-enabled capabilities have exploded in recent months, creating a $5 billion market opportunity that spans phones, tablets, cars, televisions, navigation devices, music players, PCs and more. Both Nuance and Vlingo see an unprecedented appetite for intelligent devices that understand the spoken word and deliver outcomes for consumers and professionals.

“Inspired by the introduction of services such as Apple’s Siri and our own Dragon Go!, virtually every mobile and consumer electronics company on the planet is looking for ways to integrate natural, conversational voice interactions into their mobile products, applications, and services,” says Mike Thompson, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Nuance Mobile. “By acquiring Vlingo, we are able to accelerate the pace of innovation to meet this demand.”

By harnessing the combined expertise in voice, language and multilingual capabilities, Nuance will be able to take advantage of the adoption of intelligent mobile assistants, where consumers, businesses, doctors and patients can engage in more human, natural interactions with devices and systems all over the world.

“Vlingo and Nuance have long shared a similar vision for the power and global proliferation of mobile voice and language understanding. As a result of our complementary research and development efforts, our companies are stronger together than alone. Our combined resources afford us the opportunity to better compete, and offer a powerful proposition to customers, partners and developers,” added Dave Grannan, CEO, Vlingo.