What You need to know - 03/10/11

Yahoo! & ABC form alliance;HuffPo acquires Localocracy; sexy chicken gets twitter feed

Yahoo! and ABC News annonced Monday that they have formed a new strategic alliance. ABC News content to be distributed to the Yahoo! News network, and Yahoo! News to give priority to ABC's content. 

Live webcast with newsmakers will be given a premium place, starting with today's launch of GoodMorningAmerica.com.  George Stephanopoulos from ABC News, relying on questions asked by readers of Yahoo and ABCNews.com, will conduct a webcast interview with President Obama today at 2:35 pm ET.

The Huffington Post was busy with news this Monday. It announced that it has surpassed one billion page views for the first time, while its unique monthly visitors reached a record 37 million last month. 

Other big news for The Huffington Post. It acquired local citizen sounding board Localocracy.The acquisition of Localocracy will pave the way for HuffPost to move into the hyper-local market, expanding on its local reach, with local divisions in Chicago, D.C., San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Denver. 

Redbeacon, which helps consumers find home service providers, announced Monday that it has appointed former Support.com COO, Anthony Rodio, as CEO, as Ethan Anderson steps down to pursue a new venture.

As the new CEO, what are Rodio's plan for Readbeacon? Rodio said he plans to expand Redbeacon to 10 cities by the end of the year, up from seven today.

"My long-term plan is to get the business to where it's scaling and cash-flow positive," he said, adding that the company will then soon be off to raising another round.

And now for the deeply bizarre: A sexy chicken gets its own Twitter feed. It all started with a New York Times article, Chicken’s Attraction Is Truly Skin Deep, featuring the delight of chicken's skin. What happened next is truly a viral phenomena, with followers growing by the minutes.

The latest entry reads "If you can't squeeze into your skinny jeans, try rubbing a little schmaltz on your thighs. #SexyChickenTip". It is not clear if the feed is kept up by the New York Times, or the chef behind the chicken recipes. The chicken won't tell.

Risparmio Super Italian grocery comparison shopping site announced Monday announced Monday that it has raised $550K in seed funding and has plans to launch in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2012. 

The round was co-led by Zernike Meta Ventures, an Italo-Dutch joint venture that manages the Ingenium Provincia di Catania Fund, along with Italian VC firm LVenture.

A team of scientists at the Technology and Science Institute of Northern Taiwan have invented an 'invisible key' technology. "In the future, you won't have to worry about losing or forgetting your keys," said Tsai Yao-pin, who teaches at the Technology and Science Institute.

The technology will allow users to unlock their doors with simple waving hand gestures. The technology relies on a chip that can detect movement in three dimensions as used  in Nintendo's Wii video game console.

Facebook beefs up security with Websense.  Facebook announced Monday, the partnership with the content risk identifying company, San-Diego-based,Websense.

The critically-acclaimed but short-lived series, Arrested Development gets a second chance with four new episodes and an upcoming movie. The announcement was  made about the additional season for the Emmy-winning show at an Arrested Development panel at The New Yorker festival this weekend.   Both Netflix and Showtime are bidding for exclusive rights to air the show sometimes early in 2013, according to published reports.