NASA reports that its Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) has crashed to earth in a fiery reentry sometime between 11:23 P.M. EDT on Friday and 1:09 A.M. EDT on Saturday, but still doesn’t know where it landed. Meanwhile, here’s a video taken of an unconfirmed sighting of the satellite’s pieces, said to be spotted over Okotoks, Alberta, Canada. Update:This video is fake, according to the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, responding in a Twitter post: “Okotoks video of #UARS is fake, reposted from user Fragmentus08 shot day before in Oklahoma City (of what?). Experts saw nil”

Here’s a second video, said to be shot from a backyard in Blaine, Washington and claiming to be the satellite, but this one looks to us and to many others like a Chinese lantern. However, the voices on the video are certainly convinced they’re witnessing a fiery reentry.

So far, NASA knows the 6.5-ton behemoth was “passing over Canada and Africa as well as vast portions of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans,” when it plunged to earth, but can’t be certain about “the precise reentry time and location.”

NASA and the U.S. Air Force’s Joint Space Operations Center said the satellite first began reentering the Earth’s atmosphere somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, but that’s not necessarily where it ended up, according to the Associated Press.

Although NASA says the bus-sized UARS spacecraft was mostly burned up on its way to Earth, there’s been no definitive reports of sightings of any of the 26 pieces NASA predicted would result from a collision with the earth’s atmosphere.

Will this happen again? With older spacecraft such as the UARS which was released into orbit by the U.S. space shuttle in 1991, yes, but now NASA is able to control the reentry of more modern satellites, according to Reuters.

Given that most of our blue planet is covered with oceans, that’s probably where most of it fell. Even though the satellite hit the earth roughly 9 hours before we wrote this post, we don’t know where that satellite landed. That’s not stopping the Twitterverse from chattering about the satellite, where there are a few dubious claims of sightings, but mostly humorous comments about the satellite’s location and intentions.

Where do you think the satellite landed? Has anybody seen it?

Update: Here’s another unconfirmed amateur video from Italy:

Foursquare users in the U.S. and Canada will start to see Groupon’s daily deals in the Explore tab of the application and on Foursquare.com beginning Friday, Mashable has learned.

Groupon has become Foursquare’s sixth and latest daily deals partner. The IPO-primed market leader in its growing industry was notably absent when Foursquare first rolled out daily deals from LivingSocial, Gilt City, AT&T Interactive, BuyWithMe and Zozi earlier this month.

Groupon’s regular daily deals and its newest real-time, location-based Groupon Now offers have gone live for users in the Chicago area. All Foursquare users in the U.S. and Canada can expect to see Groupon deals alongside the deals of Foursquare’s five other partners by Sunday.

Mashable first discovered the active Groupon deals Friday morning. We’ve since confirmed with Foursquare that a partnership with Groupon is in place. Groupon will share revenues with Foursquare, just like the startup’s other deals partners, splitting an undisclosed amount for each deal sold.

The mutually beneficial relationship will help Foursquare replenish its deals stock and net it access to offers from the current mayor in the deals space. Groupon, in turn, will gain added exposure and reach audiences not already subscribed to its email list.

“Foursquare’s goal is to help people connect in the real world, discover new places, and save money through Specials and Deals. We’re excited that Groupon’s daily deals and real-time deals will now be included in our Deals platform,” a company spokesperson told Mashable.

Friday’s release confirms what has long been rumored: Groupon and Foursquare have been in talks for some time. Reports have also previously speculated that Groupon is attempting to acquire Foursquare.

Image courtesy of Flickr, seanaes

RIM’s foray into tablet territory, the BlackBerry PlayBook, is now available for purchase in the U.S. and Canada.

We found the PlayBook solidly built and it offers some great features, especially when it comes to the camera and connectivity options.

Ultimately, however, the PlayBook’s dependence on a BlackBerry phone, its small form factor (the device sports a 7-inch screen) and lack of apps made it hard for us to recommend it over other tablet options on the market.

The PlayBook is available at Best Buy. The 16 GB version of the device costs $500, while the 32 GB and the 64 GB versions go for $600 and $700, respectively.

Netflix just added a streaming-only subscription plan for some U.S. customers. It costs at least $7.99 per month and it gives you all the Watch Instantly content you can handle, but it doesn’t include any DVD rentals.

It appears to be available only to a few customers at present, as we’re not able to see a streaming-only plan on our account or when creating a new one. But tech blog Engadget claims that many of its writers are able to access the plans, albeit (strangely) at different prices. On one computer they’re offered a streaming-only plan for $7.99 per month, but on another it’s $8.99.

In either case, it appears that this test also brings a bump in DVD rental plan prices. The existing $8.99, $13.99 and $16.99 plans (for one DVD, two and three, respectively) have all gone up one dollar, presumably either to differentiate the DVD and streaming plans or even to subsidize streaming users.

As is the case with existing accounts, these streaming accounts work not just on your computer but through Netflix-enabled devices like Roku, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and others, and the Starz library is included.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has said on a few occasions that he believes Netflix will ultimately be a streaming company. With enhancements to the experience on PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii and iPhone along with these new streaming plans, the company is getting closer to that reality.

It already exclusively offers streaming plans in Canada, its first market outside of the United States. No word yet on when the plans will roll out for all U.S. customers.

The mobile voice over IP (VoIP) service Fring now allows its users to make phone calls to land line and cell phone numbers anywhere in the world with prices starting at one cent per minute. Not all calls will be that cheap. Calls to Canada start at 0.4 cents per minute, and calls to India start at 1.1 cents, for example. But it’s more competition in a very small space currently dominated by Skype and to a lesser extent Google Voice.

You used to be able to make Skype calls using the Fring applications for mobile phones like the iPhone and Android devices, but following the launch of the iPhone 4, Skype and Fring got in a bit of a scuffle and Fring users were left in the cold — no Skype access.

Rather than bridge the gap between the two services, Fring has opted to launch its own service to connect its users with outside phone lines. That service is called fringOut, and it’s hard to miss that it sounds a lot like Skype’s own service for that purpose, SkypeOut.

FringOut works on Nokia phones right now and iPhone and Android support are coming in the near future, according to Fring’s press release. The release doesn’t give a detailed breakdown of costs, but there’s a rate calculator at the Fring website.

If you have a Nokia phone, give it a shot and let us know how it works. If not, hey, at least Fring provided a dorky, silent film-inspired video to keep you distracted while you wait for fringOut to show up on your platform of choice! Watch below.

If you’re as big as Google, there’s no such thing as a small product launch. So when Google introduced voice calls into its webmail service Gmail, essentially launching a Skype competitor, it was bound to be a popular feature.

How popular, exactly? Well, according to a tweet from Google, the users seem to love it, as more than one million calls were placed in the first 24 hours since the feature went live.

Let’s put that into perspective. Gmail itself is huge, with more than 176 million users (according to comScore) as of December 2009, but voice calling is currently enabled only in the U.S. (*Update: Contrary to Google’s announcement, the feature was also launched in Australia, as well as some other countries,) so it’s reasonable to expect the number of users to grow as the service spreads to more countries.

The key word here, however, is “free”: Calls to the U.S. and Canada are completely free (and will stay so for at least the rest of the year), while calls to other countries are billed at modest rates.

Google has already tried to conquer several markets through Gmail — its instant messaging counterpart is very successful, while Buzz, Google’s competitor to Twitter, was much less so. Voice calls seem like a natural addition to Gmail, and if this first figure is any indication, Skype will soon have a very formidable competitor.

In order to promote its new, cutting-edge calling technology, Google is going retro with dozens of phone booths set to sweep the nation’s airports and colleges.

At a press event at Google’s offices in San Francisco, the company launched Google Voice integration with Gmail, giving users the ability to make and receive phone calls from their inboxes. Phone calls to the U.S. and Canada are free, making Google Chat a legitimate competitor to Skype.

As part of its campaign to raise awareness for Google Voice, the company is getting creative. Sometime soon (likely before the end of the year), you’ll start seeing red Google Voice phone booths in public venues, primarily at airports and college campuses.

The phone booths aren’t just for show though; they actually make phone calls. While the phone booths have very classic-looking phones in them, they are powered by Internet connections, not by land lines. The company has not not yet disclosed where exactly these calling stations will be located.

We had a chance to test the phone booth out, and while it can be a bit confusing to operate (Google didn’t have time to update the instructions that appear in the phone booth) and there seems to be a bit of a lag for the dial tone, it does make a decent phone call. Calls from the booth, even international ones, are free of charge.

We’re not sure if Google wants to associate its VoIP service with the rotary telephone, but it is cute, noticeable and, most importantly, functional. Expect to see these red beasts real soon.

It’s official: Yahoo search is now powered by Microsoft’s Bing, the end result of a deal signed a little over one year ago by the two companies.

That means that combined, Microsoft now owns 28.1% of the search market (as of July 2010’s comScore numbers), though that’s still less than half of Google’s 65.8% share.

The implementation, which has been in testing for about a month, is currently live only in English and only in the U.S. and Canada, with “other languages [to] come in the weeks and months ahead,” according to a statement from Microsoft.

The change might not be immediately apparent to Yahoo users, as the search interface remains essentially the same (and the company has indicated that it will continue to make its own experience enhancements). However, you’ll notice if you look at the status bar in your browser that data is indeed being loaded from Bing.

Another big piece of the deal –- migrating Yahoo search advertisers to Microsoft’s adCenter platform –- is still under development, with Microsoft saying it’s “optimistic about completing this phase later this fall.”

It’s not easy to migrate to Windows 7 from Windows XP. Core incompatibilities just make it inherently difficult.

In the next year, it is likely that the enterprise will face the challenges of this migration, especially as new workstations are purchased.

The challenge is compounded by the fact that Microsoft does not offer a clear migration path to Windows 7. Further, a number of legacy applications will not work in Windows 7, no matter how well the software is moved.

Virtualization software such as that from ZInstall can make the process of switching to Windows 7 a bit easier.

ZInstall offers two “TV stations,” meaning the company uses virtualization so the user may see both Windows 7 and Windows XP on the desktop. This gives the user the ability to move to Windows 7 at their own pace.

ZInstall migrates all applications, settings and files from the old system to the new one, with no reinstalls.

The virtualization technology means every application works on Windows 7 just like on Windows XP.

ZInstall supports two main scenarios:

• Migration between two personal computers from one with Windows XP to a new one with Windows 7.
• Migration to Windows 7 on an existing personal computer.

Virtualization is proving to be highly popular in the enterprise. Companies such as Citrix and VMWare are making small fortunes selling its virtualization technologies. ZInstall is banking on this trend with its virtualization technology designed to take the headache out of switching from Windows XP to Windows 7.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone announced today that Twitter will launch two wines – a Pinot Noir and a Chardonnay – in partnership with Room to Read, a San Francisco-based non-profit that helps improve literacy rates in poor countries.

Stone describes the project, titled “Fledgling Wine“, in the video below. It’s certainly a departure from the site’s microblogging roots, but all for a good cause.

What do you think: will you buy a Twitter wine? Let us know in the comments.