Want to watch the big budget Super Bowl commercials, but can’t wait till Sunday or don’t care about football? Facebook and USA Today have just launched Ad Meter, a Facebook app where you can watch many of the TV spots right now. Then from kickoff until Tuesday night you can vote for your favorites. Traditionally an offline poll done live with handheld meters, USA Today has finally brought Ad Meter online so you can judge ads both in real-time and post-game.

The amount of stuff we trust to fly in and out of our smartphones is astounding. Just look at what happened when a couple of reporters got access to an unwitting (and rather unlucky) Apple employee’s iMessages alone — within days, they learned more about him than most people know about their closest friends.

Now, imagine all the stuff that could fly in and out of a government official’s phone, or that of a highly-ranked member of the military. Forget saucy texts and booty pictures — we’re talking about state secrets, here.

Looking to keep their secrets underwraps while on the go, the U.S government is working on a build of Android custom-tailored to meet their security requirements.

Most popular mobile sports apps are trying to feed you scores and news, or show you fantasy numbers. OnSports, by HitPost, is in a smaller class of apps that’s focused on users running the discussion themselves. And now, ahead of the Super Bowl this Sunday, viral growth and featured spots on the Android Market and the iTunes App Store are helping it step up against larger competitors.

Tumblr is introducing a new feature today that lets its users pay a dollar in order to have their post featured on the Tumblr Dashboard. The option is called “Highlights,” and it’s now available right from the new post page on Tumblr. With Highlights, you can choose a special icon that will appear next to the post along with an optional message that points out why the post is important.

Online accounting software maker Xero has raised a new $16.6 million round of funding from existing investors — including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, whose most famous investment, Facebook, just filed for an IPO,

AFCOM will present its Data Center World conference March 18-22 at the Mirage Hotel and Event Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. The conference promises to help seasoned data center and facilities management professionals gain crucial insight into how they…

Dropbox has no shortage of fans or users these days — their stellar wins at the Crunchies are proof of that — and now the cloud storage service is leaning on them to test an experimental new build of the Dropbox Android app.

While the thrill of being on the bleeding edge is probably enough for some people to take the plunge, the real meat of the experimental build comes in the form of the new auto upload feature for photos and videos. It’s pretty much exactly what the name implies: as soon as you snap a photo or take a video with your Android device, it automatically gets uploaded to your account. And in usual Dropbox fashion, it just works.

Opengata Data Systems opens Silicon Valley Office, ATI picks Phoenix NAP for disaster recovery, heathcare software solutions firm RcordQuest selects Immedion for managed services.

Leads360, a consumer sales automation and telephony platform, announced today it has completed a $15 million round of new funding. The round was led by Volition Capital and saw participation from existing Leads360 investor Rustic Canyon Partners.

The company plans to use the funding to expand its product lineup, pursue strategic relationships and raise awareness about its platform.

HP announces OpenFlow-enabled switches, Cray supercomputers now available starting at $200,000, UPS Limited expands PowerWave 6000 line of UPS systems.