Though speculation about the talks had been knocked down by Bernstein Research analyst Walter Piecyk on Tuesday,  the companies seem serious about merging the two businesses, which focus on the youth end of the market.

Virgin Mobile, partly owned by British enterpreneur Sir Richard Branson and Sprint Nextel Corp, serves more than 5 million customers. Helio is 69 percent owned by SK, with US Internet provider EarthLink owning 28 percent.

While Virgin and Helio have struggled somewhat with businesses that rely on America’s youth, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion is going from strength to strength by focusing on the grown-ups.  As our analysis shows here, RIM is expected to post earnings and revenue at the high end of forecasts later on Wednesday.

Keep an eye on:

 * Publicis launched a strategic initiative called VivaKi to boost performance in the fast-growing digital advertising market (Reuters)

 * Charter delays plan for targeted web advertising (Reuters, WSJ)

* The world’s first advertising-funded mobile telecoms operator, Blyk, will enter the highly competitive German, Spanish and Belgian markets next year (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)

“Earth has issues, and it’s time humanity came up with a plan B,” said Google as it urged users to sign up for ”Project Virgle”, due to leave Earth in 2014.

The elaborate prank includes a YouTube video featuring Brin and Page, an application form asking wannabe Mars pioneers for their opinions on algae as food or 1/3 gravity, and a 100-year plan.

In the real world, Google is cooperating with NASA on a number of technology projects and is trying to help encourage the space industry to become more entrepreneurial. 

The joke continues a Google tradition that began in 2000 with the April 1 launch of the MentalPlex, a swirling spiral promising smarter and faster searches when users stared into it while projecting a mental image of what they wanted to find.

Other examples included Google Romance in 2006, that treated finding love as “just another search problem” and offered to send couples on a ”Contextual Date^“, paid for by Google as long as they endured relevant ads during the date.

Funniest of all was Google’s announcement to the public of Gmail on April 1 2004, which many took for a hoax because of the unprecented 1 gigabyte of free storage on offer. It wasn’t.