Juicy rumor coming from Pocket-lint this morning: Facebook is reportedly eyeing a takeover of desktop, tablet and smartphone browser maker Opera Software.

Citing an unnamed source, Pocket-lint says the social network juggernaut is considering an outright acquisition of the Norwegian software company to accelerate a move onto the battlefields where the browser wars between Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Apple and since recently Yahoo are being fought.

But not so fast. First of all, we asked Opera Software for an official response on the report, and a spokesperson declined to comment.

Update: Facebook also declined to comment.

One source close to Opera, however, tells us two interesting things:

1) Opera Software management is talking to potential buyers right now.

Currently listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange, the company’s leadership is said to consider becoming part of a larger privately-held or public company rather than trying to keep growing the business independently.

2) We’re told that there’s currently a hiring freeze at Opera, which is a surefire sign that something big is about to happen – or at least that Opera wants something big to happen.

We’re trying to get more sources to corroborate these stories, but the above comes from a very solid source. Our source was unable to confirm whether Facebook was one of the potential acquirers, but said it “would make sense”.

Indeed, an acquisition of Opera could give Facebook a major boost if they decide to enter the browser wars for real (and they may eventually have to).

As the company itself admitted when it filed to go public, it has some issues monetizing mobile right now, and that’s where its users are increasingly heading to visit Facebook.

Facebook has long been rumored to be working on a full-fledged mobile operating system based on Android, and even its own (HTC-made?) ‘social’ smartphone.

Buying Opera would certainly make more sense for Facebook than to do it all from scratch, but for now this is almost all speculation. On to the facts:

About 270 million people use Opera browsers every month, the software company claims. Furthermore, more than 168 million people used the Opera Mini browser in March 2012, with a total of 117 billion pages served.

The company has deals with mobile device (and TV) OEMs and carriers worldwide.

Opera also just bought not one but two mobile advertising companies (after picking up AdMarvel back in January 2010).

Opera boasts more than 750 employees today and a strong executive team. Its chief technology officer, Håkon Wium Lie, is a pioneer in the Web field and a standards expert who is often described as the ‘father of CSS’.

Established as an independent company back in 1995, Opera expects to book roughly $50 million in revenue for the second quarter of the year. Its market cap currently hovers around $670 million.

That would make it an expensive purchase, but Facebook’s recent IPO certainly put the social networking company in a solid position to close major deals like an Opera Software acquisition. Let’s not forget it spent $1 billion to buy Instagram.

All this does not mean Opera will end up selling, and it doesn’t mean Facebook will be the buyer if they do. But for now, Opera execs are definitely talking to a number of different companies about what a deal could look like, our source asserts. Other likely suitors include search giants Yandex (Russia) and, yes, Google.

When we learn more, you’ll learn more.

Does you car need a decent scrubbing? Need someone to go pick up your groceries at the store because you’re on a tight deadline at work? Could you use someone to install that damn Ikea closet in your kid’s room before the weekend?

Not unlike TaskRabbit, Viatask and Agent Anything in the US, Milk.ly is a new marketplace that helps you get small things like that done by willing people in your neighborhood. That is, if you’re in London, which is where Milk.ly is starting out.

Co-founded by former head of Display Platform at Yahoo EMEA Sal Matteis, Milk.ly is essentially a peer-to-peer marketplace that lets people outsource errands, tasks and a wide range of small jobs to a curated network of ‘runners’ or ‘milkmen’.

The company also teams up with local businesses looking for ways to expand their reach and tap into new revenue streams for their services.

As for the business model: Milk.ly takes a 15 percent commission on each transaction that results from its marketplace.

Over time, the fledgling company also aims to introduce ‘corporate’ accounts that would allow office managers to have small errands or tasks handled by trusted and verified ‘milkmen’.

From what I can gather, they’re currently focused on laying the groundworks for a sophisticated system that would enable ‘milkmen’ to receive notifications of newly posted tasks by email, through native mobile applications and even SMS. Milk.ly is also building a solid API to let third-party developers integrate with their service.

The short-term goal is to expand to several urban areas across Europe this year. Long-term, Milk.ly wants to, oh, disrupt the entire labour market.

The startup is backed by pan-European startup accelerator Seedcamp.

Now, can someone pick up lunch for me please?

SecureKey, a Toronto, Canada-based security solutions company, has secured $30 million in a financing round led by Intel Capital. New strategic investors who participated in the funding round were Visa, MasterCard, Discover Financial Services, Rogers Venture Partners and TELUS.

SecureKey offers online and mobile authentication solutions to e-commerce companies, e-health organizations, financial institutions and governments.

Its software and hardware solutions basically allow consumers and businesses to use real-world payment and identity credentials with their computers, laptops, tablets and mobile phones to enhance online security and payments.

Intel Capital led the round because SecureKey is currently working to deploy its solutions in Intel Identity Protection Technology beginning on Ultrabook devices later in 2012. Intel Capital, which is the chip maker’s global venture capital arm invested in SecureKey a first time in February 2011.

The world-class domain name sleuthers over at Fusible have uncovered that Facebook (almost certainly) privately registered a number of domains with ‘studio edge’ in them, including the .com, .net and .org versions.

Coincidentally, the domain names were secured on the same day the social network giant launched its own Camera app for iOS. Except, it’s definitely not related to anything to do with photography, we’ve established.

We did some sleuthing of our own and found what you can see below. And yes, we’re aware of the existence of Facebook-Studio.com.

The new domain names don’t resolve yet, and there’s only a handful of mentions of ‘Facebook Studio Edge’ to be found on the Web.

I would tell you where I found these, but I’d have to kill you:

There’s also this tweet from Maggi Machado, a senior art director and copywriter at a New York advertising agency:

Went to Facebook Studio Edge training. Among other things, I know 1 billion more acronyms now!

— Maggi Machado (@MaggiMachado) January 31, 2012

And there’s this mention on the LinkedIn profile of marketing and media specialist Nneka Carrie Dudley: “012 Facebook Studio Edge Pilot Program Participant”.

This Foursquare check-in from Samantha Lim:

And this one from Charlotte Krijger:

And finally there’s this:

Question remains: what is Facebook Studio Edge?

It would appear that it’s some kind of educational program for brands and marketers, but then why is there no mention of on Facebook-Studio.com?

Update: and indeed it is. Reader Tom Saunders says:

It’s a day long course in best-practice marketing on Facebook. I attended one in London recently. What’s all the fuss about?

Define ‘fuss’. :)

For the record, there’s also StudioEdge.com which is the “future home of something quite cool” but we highly doubt that’s related to Facebook’s domain name registrations.

Berlin-based Internet startup incubator Team Europe is expanding to Asia with the establishment of a “market-watch” office in Seoul, South Korea.

It will be headed by German-Korean Ludolf Ebner-Chung, a former McKinsey consultant, with Team Europe partner Markus Fuhrmann overseeing the venture.

The idea is for Team Europe to use the new office as a launchpad to expand its activities across multiple Asian regions. So why Korea first?

Furhmann asserts that Korea has a huge Internet and smartphone environment, and that there are big opportunities for Team Europe to build successful Internet companies in the region. “It feels like Berlin a few years ago,” he says.

Fuhrmann already started several companies in China before joining Lukasz Gadowski, Kolja Hebenstreit and Steffen Höllinger at Team Europe as a partner in 2009. The firm’s portfolio includes companies like Delivery Hero, HitFox, Mister Spex and Madvertise.

Question is: do they need to change their name now?

Cloud-based collaboration and task management software company Huddle has raised $24 million in Series C financing on the heels of setting up an office in New York, and plans to use the proceeds to triple its team size in the next 12 months.

The round was led by Jafco Ventures with participation from DAG Ventures. Prior backers Matrix Partners and Eden Ventures also chipped in, as did super angel investors Subrah Iyar (founder of WebEx) and Herb Madan.

Huddle has now raised $40 million in funding to date.

Founded in London in 2006, Huddle has come a long way. The company says it has seen business triple in size each year since its inception, and plans to use the fresh capital to accelerate growth and enhance its enterprise content management and social software offerings.

The company says more than 100,000 organizations in 180 countries use its products to store, share and collaborate on content in the cloud across devices.

High-profile clients include Procter & Gamble, Saatchi & Saatchi, NASA and PwC.

Says Huddle co-founder and CEO Alastair Mitchell:

“Huddle is revolutionizing the ECM market by making it collaborative, social, ubiquitously accessible and – above all – intelligent.

Our intelligent collaboration platform opens up content silos across the global enterprise ecosystem, enabling people to share, discover and work on content wherever, whenever and with whomever they need to.”

(ECM stands for enterprise content management, in case you’re wondering).

We’re going to catch up with Mitchell in the coming days to take a more in-depth look of why they raised funding, and what they plan to do with it.

For now, read his blog post:

Huddle closes $24 million Series C round and here’s why …

Scoutmob, an app development startup that delivers digital, location-based coupons and curated content straight to users’ phones, has scored both $3.25 million in funding and a partnership with payments company First Data.

The announcements were made on Scoutmob’s blog this morning.

The capital injection comes from a group of investors that includes AOL Ventures, Capitol Broadcasting, Cox Enterprises, Ben Lerer (Thrillist) and New Atlantic Ventures.

The deal with First Data, the startup says, will help it close the “loop between offer, purchase and loyalty for local merchants”.

First Data also powers part of Google Wallet, by the way.

The partnership gives Scoutmob the ability to work with First Data’s network of over 4 million US merchants, allowing Scoutmob to link the consumer’s intent to their resulting purchase with the First Data OfferWise solution.

Founded in 2010, Scoutmob is based in Atlanta.

We were aware that activist fund Starboard Value wasn’t exactly a fan of the way AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and co run the aging Internet giant, but this ‘investor presentation’ filed with the SEC yesterday is still a must-read (embedded below).

Update: and they just issued a press release about it, too.

In just south of 100 slides, Starboard throws tons and figures, analysis, charts and survey results at AOL’s flailing operations (Patch and its Display business in particular), less-than-stellar financial performance and – lack of – a coherent strategy to turn things around.

They also go quite far in trashing Tim Armstrong and incumbent board members personally. Armstrong, for what it’s worth, disagrees with Starboard.

The fund, which owns about 5.3 percent of the Internet company, has three new nominees lined up to take seats on its board of directors, and promises to fix things should they be elected at AOL’s upcoming 2012 Annual Meeting (to be held on June 14).

As I said, it’s well worth a look.

Mobile advertising firm Millennial Media this morning released its ‘Mobile Mix’ report covering its findings for the first quarter of this year. The report looks at trends in ad impressions across mobile devices and operating systems.

The mobile advertising company found that tablets – or ‘non-phone mobile devices’ – accounted for 20 percent of all 45 billion monthly ad impressions on its platform during Q1 2012, up from 15 percent in the same period last year.

The report also found that Android remained the top overall OS on the platform in the first quarter of this year, with a 49 percent share of impressions.

Furthermore, Millennial says Android made up 14 of the ‘top 20′ mobile phones.

Apple remained king of the hill when looking at individual mobile device makers thanks to its iPhone, however, with Samsung in second place with 4 of the top 20 mobile phones. Surprise: the BlackBerry Curve is ranked in second place.

Millenial says Apple represented 28 percent of the top manufacturers’ impression share, with the iPhone accounting for 15 percent of mobile ad impressions.

The Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab and Amazon Kindle Fire were the top tablets in Q1 2012, and all three were among the top 20 mobile devices.

Also read: New iPad overtakes original iPad in the US after only 2 months: Report

After raising a whopping $155 million in funding from DST, General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital at the end of last year, Swedish online payments company Klarna has brought two heavyweights from the haute finance industry on board – literally.

The company this morning announced that Nigel Morris, co-founder of Capital One, and Anton Levy, MD of General Atlantic, have joined its board of directors.

Morris co-founded Capital One and which grew the firm to one of the largest issuers of Visa and MasterCard in the world. During his 10-year tenure, Capital One’s sales grew revenue to $11 billion annually and a market cap of $18 billion.

Levy is a managing director at General Atlantic, and sits on the boards of companies like AKQA, Gilt Groupe, Red Ventures and Web.com.

Klarna’s board already had seats for two other big names from the investment world: Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital and Klaus Hommels.

The company says 6 million shoppers already using its service for after-delivery online payments, and that it currently handles over $2.5 billion worth of transactions annually for 15,000 merchants across Europe.

Watch this one, folks.