What you need to know - 08/05/11

LinkedIn shares wobbly as ever; toddlers love to eat smartphones, and use them

Surveying 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers, comScore found the leaders in mobile: on the manufacturing side, it's Samsung, and on the platform side, it's Android.

Google and Microsoft are still quarreling on blog and Twitter over the Novell patents, which Apple and Microsoft won.

Mobile device manufacturer HTC Corporation acquired Dashwire, maker of the Dashworks platform that provides mobile and web applications. Dashwire will become a wholly owned subsidiary of HTC.

LinkedIn saw its shares rise to just over $100 at market's open, before barreling down more than $10 just ten minutes later. The reaction is a wobbly one, and comes a day after the professsional social network reported a solid first public quarter.

Monetate, provider of testing, targeting, and personalization solutions for websites, raised a $15 million Series B round of funding led by OpenView Venture Partners.

On Deck, a technology platform that connects small businesses directly to capital,  received $4 million in follow-on funding to its $15 million round in January.

A survey of over 1,000 moms conducted by BlogHER and Parenting Group found that 25% of moms said they’ve let their child use a smartphone before the age of two.

The White House is welcoming a new Chief Information Officer to succeed Vivek Kundra. Former Microsoft exec Steven VanRoekel, an Obama supporter who attended the inauguration, will become the next CIO of the federal government.