Former IAC (NSDQ: IACI) exec Nick Lehman has spent the last few months working on a new venture called Uncommon Media that was to be a portfolio of digital properties aimed at the luxury market, using a daily newsletter to gain some attention. But, paidContent has learned, Lehman is about to be announced as EVP / GM of lifestyle network Plum TV. My understanding is Lehman approached Plum about ways they could work together. Rather than a strategic partnership, Lehman will work for Plum expanding its TV assets and branding from a TV net with a website into a “next-gen” company with a bigger presence online and in mobile. Lehman was EVP and GM, MTVN (NYSE: VIA) Games and Interactive Media Group, before IAC, so he has experience meshing cable and digital. Lehman left IAC in late 2008 when the programming unit, where he was COO, was dissolved.

Plum, which has local basic cable channels in Aspen, Vail, Miami Beach and other areas that attract the rich, raised $20 million in 2006 from former Viacom CEO Tom Freston, Jimmy Buffet, Bob Pittman’s investment group and Robert Kraft, among others. It added more than $5 million last year; investors included Brian Bedol, who is now executive chairman. Bedol founded and sold cable nets Classc Sports and CSTV to ESPN (NYSE: DIS) and CBS (NYSE: CBS) respectively.

WashingtonPost.com wasn’t the first Washington Post Co. (NYSE: WPO) outlet to go for the gold—or at least some silver—with a paid iPhone app: Sibling Slate hit the iTunes store ahead of the newspaper with its own $1.99 app. Unlike the newspaper, which plans to reevaluate its price for next year, Slate‘s charging a one-time fee for this version. But Slate Group Chairman Jacob Weisberg doesn’t rule out a subscription version through the iPhone—or the iPad.

Weisberg, who joined Slate.com soon after it was founded in 1996, is no fan of paywalls online. He spoke from the floor at our recent paidContent 2010 about how awful it was for writers and for Slate overall when the site was subscription-only and addresses it again here. But he has no problems charging for mobile content: “My philosophy about this is we want to keep the content free but people to pay for the convenience of delivery in mobile forms. ... I think it makes a lot of sense but I also think it’s very important that we train users at an early stage to expect to pay for mobile.” Even $1.99 sends the message that the content isn’t created for free, while having the online access allows Slate to still have that critical mass it needs for editorial reach and advertising. More in the video embedded below or in this mp3.

Anand Subramanian is leaving his post as CEO of online ad firm ContextWeb and handing over those duties to Tim Murray. Subramanian will remain with the New York company as chairman and president of the Adsdaq ad exchange. Murray spent 21 years with AT&T (NYSE: T) before he was tapped to hold a number of other CEO posts over the past decade. His most recent role was COO of wireless firm Dialogic, after it acquired Cantata Technology, which was acquired by Dialogic over two years ago. Among the roles Murray held at AT&T included everything from marketing and sales to engineering and product management.

A day after Google (NSDQ: GOOG) began redirecting visitors to its search engine in China to its Hong Kong site, Google says that people in mainland China can still access the Google.com.hk site, although “it seems that certain sensitive queries are being blocked.” That makes the situation for Google users in China seemingly much the same as it was before. But in an interview with James Fallows, Chief Legal Officer David Drummond emphasizes that there’s one crucial difference: “We are censoring nothing,” he says. “The Firewall can block access to certain kind of search results regardless of how you get to them. They are treating Google.com.hk - treating it like Google.com [that is, as a foreign source that is screened by the Firewall].”

Location-based ad startup Placecast has added $3 million in additional funding. The company says it will use the cash to expand its ‘ShopAlerts’ service, which sends people promotional text messages when they’re near a specific retail location. (It’s all opt-in). This is a double hot space—with both Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) buying up mobile ad networks and with ‘location’ seemingly replacing ‘real-time’ as the buzz word du jour.

And indeed, in its announcement, Placecast takes the highly unusual step of mentioning a specific company that theoretically could be interested in acquiring it. Talk about chutzpah! (From the e-mail a representative sent us: “The 451 Group’s mobile analyst, Thomas Rasmussen believes the next mobile ad M&A will happen with a location twist. He predicts someone like Nokia (NYSE: NOK) will want to buy a company like Placecast.”)

Kid-friendly web browser KidZui—which claims “hundreds of thousands of users”—has added $4 million in additional funding. Kidzui’s browser lets kids navigate to more than two million pre-screened sites; parents get a weekly e-mail showing what their kids have looked at online. A basic version is free, although, for $39.95 a year, parents can get additional security controls.

Sprint (NYSE: S) is in third place when it comes to the number of subscribers it has on its network, but it wants everyone to know that it is the first to roll out a 4G network in the U.S.

To add to that momentum, Sprint unveiled the first WiMax-based phone, HTC Evo 4G, at CTIA today. Although the phone won’t be available until summer, Sprint still may beat all other carriers to market with a 4G phone by a year or more. Verizon Wireless, which is rolling out a competing LTE network, said phones won’t be ready until 2011. Sprint is live with 4G in 27 markets and expects to quadruple its footprint this year.

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has been beta testing a new conversion reporting tool for AdWords called “search funnels,” which could expand the service beyond the direct response ads that the Google ad units are primarily known for. Right now, AdWords only tracksa user’s last click. The new reporting mechanism in the “funnels” shows what placements a user has seen before making the decision to click, Sissie Hsiao, product manager for AdWords’ search funnels told paidContent.

On the face of it, the only thing news publishing and aviation have in common is massive recent disruption - nevertheless, Guardian Media Group CEO Carolyn McCall is flying off to become chief executive of European budget airline easyJet, Sky News’ City editor and FT correspondents report.

GMG declined to comment to paidContent:UK. We understand London-listed easyJet will announce the move to the market Wednesday morning. There’s no word yet of a replacement - McCall is not expected to leave immediately.

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz now has a third board seat she can fill. John Chapple, the president of PE firm Hawkeye Investments (and the former CEO of Nextel) won’t stand for re-election in order “to devote more time to his other business interests.”

Chapple was one of two directors that activist investor Carl Icahn brought to the Yahoo board in August 2008 in order to settle a proxy fight designed to remove Yahoo’s board and replace it with a new board that would negotiate the sale of the company to Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT). Since then, of course, Yahoo has reached a search ad deal with Microsoft, and Icahn has both greatly reduced his stake in the firm and even quit the board.

»  Nintendo announces its newest product, the Nintendo 3DS. The portable device will use two screens and be backwards compatible with current DS and DSi games. Word is that it’ll appear at this year’s E3 and be released before the end of the year. [ars technica]

»  Facebook is implementing a part automated/part human evaluation program to disable marketers from using user profile features—like gender, age and location—in their ad copy. Fortune 500 brands likely won’t be affected. [ClickZ]

»  Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) quietly adds a “Gift This App” button in the desktop version of the App Store to make it easier to send others paid apps. [Boy Genius Report]

»  Comparing Wall Street Journal‘s and New York Times’ revenues and employee wages. [Business Insider]

»  Your journalism job could be outsourced to… a robot. The newly upgraded robot journalist determines newsworthy items, takes relevant photographs and collects quotes from bystanders. [Gizmodo]