Just when the average consumer was learning to take advantage of the 3G network (while perhaps noticing the limits of the 2.5G Edge network on the iPhone), it’s time to prep for 4G. Verizon and Vodafone are already testing 4G equipment that relies on the Long-Term Evolution standard.

Arun Bhikshesvaran, VP of business strategy and CTO for Ericsson North America, said the equipment maker has launched a trial of its LTE baseband equipment with an unnamed carrier. He expects it will be completed toward the end of the year.

Is Michael Dell rescuing his little brother, or does Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) spending $165 million to buy email continuity firm MessageOne make sense? MessageOne has a good product, but without the sexy security component offered by Postini or FrontBridge, buyers never picked up the 10-year-old company. So the deal has more than a hint of nepotism.

Adam Dell was a co-founder, the former chairman and a financial backer of MessageOne. A filing with the SEC points out that many Dells stand to gain from the transaction, thanks to $45 million that will go to Adam Dell’s venture funds:

Intel (INTC) and STMicroelectronics (STM) have managed to produce a breakthrough in a new type of memory technology that could replace flash. Members of their joint venture Numonyx, which is trying to develop memory chips reliant on phase-change memory [PRAM] to store information, will present a paper today demonstrating how they’ve used it to double the amount of information they can store. It’s good news, but it still means it will cost twice as much to store the same amount of data on PRAM chips compared with the competing flash technology.

Phase-change memory relies on changes in temperature to store data; it competes with NOR flash, which is used to store the programs that run your VCR, set-top box and cell phone. The other type of flash, NAND, is used to store larger amounts of memory, such as the songs on an iPod.

Two bits of news — Ringleader Digital snagging $6 million for its ad network, and Goowy being acquired by AOL — started me thinking again about how exactly companies are going to make money on the social web. The anticipated $80 million in online ad spending cited by Microsoft as the rationale behind its bid for Yahoo is a big number, but how that spending will be apportioned isn’t clear.

Like the evolution of banner ads in the 90s, when startups touted eyeballs and their site’s stickiness, or the transition to search advertising in the early 00s (are we really calling this the aughts?), the path to the next generation of online advertising is murky. In the same way that radio and billboards are still hanging around, search and display ads aren’t going anywhere, but what’s next?