Category: News

As March Madness, one of the biggest under-the-table gambling event in American sports, approaches, sports site Fanhood is trying to tempt users and their friends into placing tournament pics and other casual wagers online. The site is one of a growing number of “social casinos” like Zynga Poker that offer casual play — but that are also crossing their fingers for a big windfall as states loosen online gambling restrictions.

According to CEO Brandon Ramsey, a former engineer at Yahoo and Zynga, Fanhood is aimed at the millions of Americans who make casual sports bets with friends for fun and bragging rights. He claims the site, which relies on Facebook’s platform, has 50,000 active users who can use virtual currency tokens to bet on everything from the Superbowl to NHL hockey games.

“It’s the same kind of psychology as taking $5 from a friend,” said Ramsey, claiming that Fanhood’s message boards and ongoing tallies of bet outcomes will keep users coming back. He adds virtual currency sales can sustain Fanhood because, unlike social games like Farmville, it doesn’t need fresh content — the sports matches supply that.

While Fanhood may succeed with virtual betting and sports chatter (much like the thriving fantasy sports industry), a big payoff would come through real money betting — a New York Times report pegged online betting as worth between $6 and $100 billion. But, for sports, this is a longshot at best.

Like Zynga Poker, Fanhood is only legal because players can’t cash out. If they could, these sites would be violating federal laws that forbid online betting unless states permit it.

In recent months, the prospects for social gaming companies have brightened as Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware have legalized online gambling. The process, however, is far from smooth sailing. Companies still must navigate established casino interests and, in the case of poker, assemble a critical mass of players (you can only gamble across state lines if all states involved permit it).

The legal challenge is even bigger when it comes to sports betting. According to Jim Gatto, a lawyer who specializes in gambling issues, the federal government deliberately excluded sports when they loosened online gambling rules in 2011. The reason, he said, is that sports depend on human action for the result — meaning there is an incentive to fix the results when there’s money on the outcome (history, including the NBA, shows he’s right).

This means Fanhood and other social sports betting sites will have to be content with virtual currency for the foreseeable future. There is also a chance too, of course, that a casino or other large gambling company will acquire them in the hopes of luring casual sports betters to a gambling site.

(Image by Jerry Sharp via Shutterstock)

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Google Reader is being retired on July 1. The Internet (and Hitler) have collectively lost it. What everybody wants to know, though, is why Google feels it needs to shut down Reader?

The official company line is that usage has declined. Google is also a busy company with a lot of projects going on at once. Shutting down Reader lets them refocus the team on something else. One former product manager for Google Reader suggests the Reader team will be sent to work on Google+.

Brian Shih, Former Google Reader Product Manager, recently responded to a thread on Quora asking why Google Reader was being shut down. He says that the common explanation for Google Reader’s demise – lack of monetization options – probably didn’t play a role in its sunsetting. Instead, it’s all on Google+ and the company wanting to move more resources to the social network:

Let’s be clear that this has nothing to do with revenue vs operating costs. Reader never made money directly (though you could maybe attribute some of Feedburner and AdSense for Feeds usage to it), and it wasn’t the goal of the product.

Reader has been fighting for approval/survival at Google since long before I was a PM for the product. I’m pretty sure Reader was threatened with de-staffing at least three times before it actually happened. It was often for some reason related to social:

2008 – let’s pull the team off to build OpenSocial
2009 – let’s pull the team off to build Buzz
2010 – let’s pull the team off to build Google+

It turns out they decided to kill it anyway in 2010, even though most of the engineers opted against joining G+. Ironically, I think the reason Google always wanted to pull the Reader team off to build these other social products was that the Reader team actually understood social (and tried a lot of experiments over the years that informed the larger social features at the company). Reader’s social features also evolved very organically in response to users, instead of being designed top-down like some of Google’s other efforts.

He says the real death knell came when the company decided to move Reader’s social features to Google+ in an effort to encourage more sharing via its social network. Since then, he assumes that Reader usage has dropped as more people moved to Google+.

So with dwindling usefulness to G+, (likely) dwindling or flattening usage due to being in maintenance, and Google’s big drive to focus in the last couple of years, what choice was there but to kill the product?

Shih notes that all of this is purely conjecture as he left Google in 2011. The reasoning behind the shutdown could be as simple as Google says it is – Reader doesn’t have many users anymore. Still, it’s interesting to see the internal politics regarding Google’s products, and how they decide to allocate resources.

[h/t: The Next Web]

Lance Armstrong may represent the largest shift of public perception surrounding an athlete since Pete Rose was caught betting on baseball.

Armstrong maintained his steadfast rejection of doping rumors until the last possible second, making his lies seem all the greater. His world came crashing down last year as he was abandoned by sponsors and even by his own Liveotrong organization. As a final humiliation, the cyclist was stripped of all of his record-setting Tour de France titles. The athlete recently appeared in an interview with Oprah Winfrey to give a lukewarm apology and reveal some choice details of his doping.

This week, Armstrong (who lives in Texas) was spotted in Los Angeles. TMZ reported that the athlete was spotted attending a restaurant and posing for pictures.

Armstrong has been rumored to be in talks with movie studio executives over a possible biopic about Armstrong’s storied life. In fact, TMZ hinted that there could two different movies about Armstrong in some form of pre-production.

As a side note, let’s indulge in a bit of speculation as to who Hollywood may cast to play Armstrong in a movie. A young Paul Newman would be perfect, but rumors suggest that Bradley Cooper may have been cast as the world’s most infamous cyclist. More great casting suggestions would be welcome in the comments section below.

Photo and video sharing company Photobucket Corp. is looking to raise $9.5 million in new funding, according to a recent regulatory filing. The Denver-based company has apparently already sealed $5.6 million in commitments, according to the filing.

The post Photo Sharing Site Photobucket Looking for $9.5M appeared first on peHUB.

Online lender iPawn has raised $4 million from angel investors. Investor Rafi Gridron led the round. This is the second round of funding for Tyler, Texas-based iPawn.

PRESS RELEASE
iPawn, a leading lender of low-interest, asset-based, online loans, today announced the successful close of a $4 million round of funding. The funding came from a group of angel investors lead by Rafi Gridron, a respected technology entrepreneur and experienced angel investor.

This is the second round of funding for the Tyler TX based internet pawn shop. The funds will be used for enhanced marketing efforts, R&D and increased loan funds for clients.

Founded in December 2011, iPawn was created to serve middle-class Americans and entrepreneurs looking for fast and convenient low-interest loans during the credit crunch. iPawn approves loans in less than one hour with its highly sophisticated backend office and provides its customers with complete confidentiality and highly competitive loan terms – as low as one percent interest.

“We are very grateful to our all of our investors,” said Ben De-Kalo, CEO of iPawn. “We are proud to be able to provide people with an affordable, safe and convenient way to leverage their assets for otherwise hard-to-get loans during these uncertain times and are thrilled that our investors so enthusiastically support our mission.”

“When I realized that iPawn was revolutionizing a broken business model, but one that still had an enormous potential, I immediately jumped on board,” said Dr. Rafi Gidron, independent angel investor and angel investor at Precede Technologies. Gridron’s previous successes include the co-founding of Chromatis Networks that was sold to Lucent for $4.75 billion under his leadership at co-CEO and Chairman, as well as Scorpio Communications that was sold to US Robotics.

About iPawn
iPawn is revolutionizing the national credit market by offering short-term, affordable loans at unbeatable rates and with less risk than banks, payday lenders, brick & mortar pawn shops and other online services. Headquartered in Tyler, Texas, iPawn holds a Pawn license issued by the Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner.

The post iPawn Raises $4M appeared first on peHUB.

Look around. Can you see the internet of things? The beginning stages of the network of connected devices and services that can help us track our fitness goals, manage our home automation and improve factory performance is all around us; we just have to knit things together. We also have to start tracking how many devices we’re connecting to the internet, especially those that we don’t interact with directly, like we do laptops or smartphones.

If the core theme of our internet of things meetup in San Francisco was how we define the topic, then the big question of our Boulder, Colo. meetup on Wednesday night was, “where is the internet of things?” THE 80-to-90 people at the home of TechStars (our host for the evening) weren’t interested in abstract ideas about avatars or services versus hardware; they wanted the stories from on the ground.

For example, Mike Soucie, a cofounder of Mobiplug, laid out his company’s vision for the connected home, showing how you could connect your existing devices using the Mobiplug hub. He was asked about privacy; namely, when we put all this information from our Philips’ Hue light bulbs to our door locks on our phone, what happens if the phone goes missing? Or someone snoops on our home Wi-Fi network? Soucie acknowledged that these are concerns, but didn’t really answer the question, stating that people already keep a lot of information on their phones today.

But he did help people stop thinking about the internet of things as some brand-new concept, pointing out this it is an extension of inventions like the printing press that helped drive the spread of information, and thus innovation. In many cases, where we are today is similar, only the information is coming at us much faster — and we have cheap computing to do something with it.

The historical perspective was popular with Michael Rosenblatt, who is the CEO of Atoms Express, a connected toy company. He traced the internet of things back to a connected stock ticker from the late 1800s and pointed out that companies exist who still do variations on that today (click through). His presentation dovetailed nicely with Soucie’s. From both I took away three characteristics consumers will likely care most about when purchasing connected products:

Unification: As Rosenblatt said, “At home I have a bunch of remotes and now I have a bunch of apps.” This is almost the founding statement of Mobiplug as well. No one wants to open six apps to turn down the lights, start a movie, lock the doors and settle in for a movie night.

Wrap your software in great hardware : This is pretty self-explanatory, but even if the internet of things will center around services and software, you will lure consumers with the hardware itself. So make it attractive and resilient.

Device awareness (network topologies) will matter : This one is nerdy, but important. A true internet of things won’t just react to you (or your smartphone) it should be able to react to other devices around it. Network protocols and figuring out how to program networks will be crucial in bringing more autonomy to the internet of things (at that point we can rename it Skynet).

While Soucie and Rosenblatt covered where we have been and where they hope the industry goes, another speaker, Matt Bolton of SparkFun, offered a complementary presentation that showcased how the internet of things owes a debt to the Maker movement. The availability of electronics projects like those sold by SparkFun are often a gateway drug for the entrepreneurs who end up starting IoT companies.

The culture around hacking together hardware leads people to contemplate how the experience can be improved — and since many of these projects involved an element of connectivity, people start looking at how to bridge the digital and physical worlds in ways that more and more people could participate in. Out of projects like that you get startups like SmartThings, Electric Imp, and others.

Bolton’s points about the challenges faced by SparkFun as an open hardware manufacturer — he estimates his company has 12 weeks before someone clones their designs — also echoes an unfortunate truth about the speed at which alternatives to hardware can enter the market. That’s why services and software will be so crucial for startups building the internet of things.

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Microsoft attributed the March 12 glitch affecting Hotmail and Outlook.com to a temperature spike in one of its data centers. Many users said they had no access to the services on Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning. SkyDrive was also affected.

According to a Wednesday Outlook blog post by Microsoft VP Arthur de Haan:

“On the afternoon of the 12^th, in one physical region of one of our datacenters, we performed our regular process of updating the firmware on a core part of our physical plant. This is an update that had been done successfully previously, but failed in this specific instance in an unexpected way. This failure resulted in a rapid and substantial temperature spike in the datacenter. This spike was significant enough before it was mitigated that it caused our safeguards to come in to place for a large number of servers in this part of the datacenter.”

Many Hotmail and Outlook users have reported on-going issues with the services since January, when Microsoft started migrating Hotmail users over to Outlook.com. Making things harder to track is that not all these issues show up on the Microsoft Live Status page which only reflects problems affecting a “significant” number of users. Microsoft told users who are having issues to log into their account to see for more information on their status.

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BlackBerry’s (BBRY) new flagship Z10 smartphone has seemingly been well-received in a number of markets, and the latest round of launches has been no different. Following a note from Jefferies & Company analyst Peter Misek suggesting the BlackBerry Z10 sold out across numerous retailers in India, RBC Capital Markets’ Mark Sue and RBC Dominion Securities’ Paul Treiber report that the Z10 has indeed been well received in India and other new markets following its launch late last month. The duo’s checks have found stock-outs across India and other markets. They raised their February-quarter estimates to 500,000 units from 350,000 as a result, but they still see BlackBerry selling 2 million smartphones in the May quarter as sales appear to be slowing in Canada and the United Kingdom.

Continue reading…

Is your maternal grandfather a fairly good indicator of whether or not you’re going to be bald? Yeah, kind of. But he’s not the only thing you should worry about. Sure, there are some “nurture” elements to hair loss, but a lot of it is “nature,” and therefore you’re screwed, bro.

[AsapSCIENCE]

Phil Schiller’s preemptive attack against Samsung’s Galaxy S IV, which launches later today, says everything you need to hear about the sorry state of Apple. I’m stunned, because the marketing chief sounds too much like Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in 2007, when he dismissed iPhone. Denial is the surest sign a company has lost its way, and I don’t just mean some executive denying such-and-such product or competitor is any good as distracting marketing ploy. The worst, and Schiller gives it, is corporate denial — the proverbial ostrich with head in the sand — about the world around.

Last night, I saw Schiller quoted in the Wall Street Journal. This morning I see posts from Bloomberg and Reuters, too, and a raff of tech blogs and news stories — largely quoting one of the more mainstream services. The Journal calls Schiller’s Android attack a “rare interview”. But I see something else: Desperation. Denial. What’s missing means much more: The typical leaks and rumors about Apple’s next thing that steals the thunder from a competitor. Apple has nothing to show, and the InterWebs are less embracing of rumors. How pathetic is that?

Schiller, like Ballmer

Think about it. For the previous three years, Apple launched a new tablet around this time, with lots of buzz-generating rumors circling round. In 2013, there is near silence about the next iPads — plural now there is mini — or anything other than a watch. Oh, please! How lame! Apple’s problem is two-fold then: Nothing new is imminent and bloggers, news media and social network sharers aren’t as quick to jump on new rumors or counter-marketing moves.

Consider Consumer Electronics Show, where Apple rumors typically overshadow real announcements. The best the company could do this year: Announcement about 40 billion downloads, which took little attention away from CES. Meanwhile, the InterWebs are a tangle of Galaxy S4 rumors and product sightings — the kind of stuff that just a year ago would have been about an iOS device. Suddenly Samsung is the cool kid in town.

Why the cold reception? As I’ve asserted for years: Apple’s stock price. Lots of people had lots of reasons to spread rumors because they lifted Apple shares. And as these investors — some, bloggers writing regularly about Apple — made money they couldn’t contain their glee. Joy is contagious, they say. So are sour grapes. Shares are down nearly 40 percent today from September’s all-time high. Lots of people lost lots of money in Apple and aren’t feeling good at all about their share crop. There’s nothing to gain propagating rumors, either. Apple’s stock is a rolling bolder.

Denial Means…

The bigger problem is leadership living in denial, which is the clear tone of Schiller’s statements. In all three interviews the marketing exec rails about Android fragmentation — to which I say: “Tell us something we don’t already know”. His reasoning reminds of iPod competitors in the mid-Noughties. So many of them complained that Apple’s music player lacked features like FM radio and was overall too simple. But simple, particularly sync, is what people wanted — and features like super-long battery life and smaller size. As an analyst then, I consulted with several companies certain they could beat iPod with more features. But they missed the fundamentals.

Schiller does the same thing today. He rattles off stats about how fragmented Android is compared to iOS. But his priorities are misplaced. Like consumers buying iPods a decade ago, people don’t care. What matters is user experience — what Apple once got right and made a priority — not the underlying operating system. During fourth quarter, Samsung accounted for 42.5 percent of Android sales, according to Gartner. Buyers got a single, unified user experience from TouchWiz UI.

Schiller’s statements so reminds of competitors dumbfounded by Apple. He denies market realities, like they did. The quality and tone of his statements — that he would even grant “rare” interviews — shows Apple in crisis:

• Apple isn’t winning China, Android is
• iPhone subsidies aren’t sustainable long-term
• iPad mini cannibalizes iPad 4 and Mac computer sales

That Apple has nothing to show at a time when it typically does, even if just a whiff of rumor, shows leadership in disarray — and the response sounds too much like Nokia or Microsoft executives facing down iPhone in 2007 and 2008. In January, I asked: “Will 2013 be another year of Apple iteration masquerading as innovation?” Schiller already answered the question.

Photo Credit: Andrew Mager

Companies are turning to “purpose” and “authenticity” as a way to engage consumers and employees. But it’s hard enough to find a purpose in life if you’re an individual, let alone an entire company. And being authentic is a bit like being cool — sometimes the harder you try, the less you are.

So what’s a leader to do?

The first step is to recognize that there are different kinds of purpose. Sometimes purpose is about values — who you are and what you stand for. Other times it is about value — what you do and how it benefits others.

The ultimate goal would seem to be having your values and value aligned: have what you do reflect who you are, have what you stand for guide what you make, and have your value to the community enhance your value to customers and shareholders.

This goal is of aligning values and value is espoused by many eminent leaders, from Jim Stengel to Bill George. It’s a core tenet in the field of corporate social responsibility.

But in a social age, this kind of purpose isn’t enough. The problem comes down to a simple preposition. Most leaders think of purpose as a purpose for. But what is needed is a purpose with.

Customers are no longer just consumers; they’re co-creators. They aren’t just passive members of an audience; they are active members of a community. They want to be a part of something; to belong; to influence; to engage. It’s not enough that they feel good about your purpose. They want it to be their purpose too. They don’t want to be at the other end of your for. They want to be right there with you. Purpose needs to be shared.

To understand the power of shared purpose, it’s useful to look at the mission statements of leading companies. To be clear, I’m not equating mission statements with company purpose. But they illustrate the point, and in fact are remarkably representative of the differences between the companies. So with that caveat, let’s look at our first mission statements from Adidas and Nike:

Adidas: The adidas Group strives to be the global leader in the sporting goods industry with brands built on a passion for sports and a sporting lifestyle.

Nike: To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world.

*”If you have a body, you are an athlete.”

Notice how you respond to each statement. Which one do you feel more a part of, regardless of whether you are a customer or shareholder? Adidas puts the emphasis on value and values. But Nike goes further, addressing not only people’s interests but their sense of who they are. Adidas is for, while Nike is with.

Let’s look at another example, this time between Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts.

Dunkin Donuts:> Make and serve the freshest, most delicious coffee and donuts quickly and courteously in modern, well-merchandised stores.

Starbucks: Our mission: to inspire and nurture the human spirit — one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.

Dunkin Donuts’ purpose is clearly for customers, and it delivers on this purpose exceedingly well. But there is something different about Starbucks’ purpose. It is a purpose that is achieved with its customers.

Again, mission statements don’t always reflect a company’s true purpose. But in these cases, I think you would agree that they are fairly accurate representations of the company’s approach to the market, its engagement with customers, and its perception as an “authentic” brand.

The relationship of shared purpose to corporate social responsibility is worth exploring a bit further, this time by comparing Pepsi and Coca-Cola. Under the label “Performance with Purpose,” Pepsi has declared both a mission and a vision.

Mission: Our mission is to be the world’s premier consumer products company focused on convenient foods and beverages.

Vision: PepsiCo’s responsibility is to continually improve all aspects of the world in which we operate — environment, social, economic — creating a better tomorrow than today.

This is a perfect example of a “Values and Value” approach to purpose. The vision covers values, and the mission covers value. But something is missing. There is no shared purpose here. Nothing for people to participate in, belong to, engage with, co-create, or share with others that aligns the commercial side of the business with social responsibility.

By contrast, Coca-Cola has declared as its mission:

To refresh the world…
To inspire moments of optimism and happiness…
To create value and make a difference.

While the third line is a bit generic, the first two lay a stronger foundation for a shared purpose. It is perhaps no coincidence that Nike, Starbucks, and Coca-Cola all feature the word inspiration in their mission statements. You can’t inspire someone without their participation and engagement.

How can you create your own shared purpose? It’s simple, but not easy. The essential question is:

What is the shared purpose that …

a) We and our customers can work on together?
b) Is a natural expression of who we are and what we stand for?
c) Connects how we make money with how we contribute to the world?

When you apply this lens to the brand we have covered here, you can see how Nike, Starbucks, and Coca-Cola pass the test. Nike to inspire the athlete in all of us. Starbucks to nurture the human spirit. And Coca-Cola to refresh the world with moments of optimism and happiness
.
As you formulate your shared purpose, don’t go for what you think it should be. Look for who you already are. How you already connect with your customers. What your fans already say about you.

Remember, this is not something you are going to do to them, or for them, but with them. It’s a journey you will be on together, hopefully for a very long time.

Later today in New York, Samsung plans to introduce its latest flagship Android phone, the Galaxy S 4. I’ll be covering the event live from Radio City Music Hall starting at 4pm PT (7pm ET), as Samsung introduces what will likely be the most scrutinized phone in the Android world.

Samsung is coming off a strong year, during which it has practically assumed control of the Android market as rivals like HTC, Motorola, LG and others have faltered. We already know an awful lot about the Galaxy S 4, and here are a few stories to whet your appetite while waiting for the event to start.

• Bloomberg all but confirms Samsung Galaxy S 4 features. Any surprises left?
• Call in podcast: Galaxy S 4 predictions and Chromebook Pixel cloud storage
• Samsung spent $401M on Galaxy ads and iPhone mockery in 2012
• Two days before launch, reported Samsung Galaxy S 4 video leaks
• Alleged Galaxy S 4 images show Samsung may (smartly) stick with a proven design
• The Samsung juggernaut widens its lead over Apple

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After due diligence, including a survey of published scientific research and recommendations from our Science Board and our community, we have decided that Graham Hancock’s and Rupert Sheldrake’s talks from TEDxWhiteChapel should be removed from distribution on the TEDx YouTube channel.

Both talks have been flagged as containing serious factual errors that undermine TED’s commitment to good science. The critiques of these talks need much clearer highlighting.

We’re not censoring the talks. Instead we’re placing them here, where they can be framed to highlight both their provocative ideas and the factual problems with their arguments. See both talks after the jump.

All talks on the TEDxTalks channel represent the opinion of the speaker, not of TED or TEDx, but we feel a responsibility not to provide a platform for talks which appear to have crossed the line into pseudoscience.

SHELDRAKE
According to our science board, Rupert Sheldrake bases his argument on several major factual errors, which undermine the arguments of talk. For example, he suggests that scientists reject the notion that animals have consciousness, despite the fact that it’s generally accepted that animals have some form of consciousness, and there’s much research and literature exploring the idea.

He also argues that scientists have ignored variations in the measurements of natural constants, using as his primary example the dogmatic assumption that a constant must be constant and uses the speed of light as example. But, in truth, there has been a great deal of inquiry into the nature of scientific constants, including published, peer-reviewed research investigating whether certain constants – including the speed of light – might actually vary over time or distance. Scientists are constantly questioning these assumptions. For example, just this year Scientific American published a feature on the state of research into exactly this question. (“Are physical constants really constant?: Do the inner workings of nature change over time?”) Physicist Sean Carroll wrote a careful rebuttal of this point.

In addition, Sheldrake claims to have “evidence” of morphic resonance in crystal formation and rat behavior. The research has never appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, despite attempts by other scientists eager to replicate the work.

HANCOCK
Graham Hancock’s talk, again, shares a compelling and unorthodox worldview, but one that strays well beyond the realm of reasonable science. While attempting to critique the scientific worldview, he misrepresents what scientists actually think. He suggests, for example, that no scientists are working on the problem of consciousness.

In addition, Hancock makes statements about psychotropic drugs that seem both nonscientific and reckless. He states as fact that psychotropic drug use is essential for an “emergence into consciousness,” and that one can use psychotropic plants to connect directly with an ancient mother culture. He seems to offer a one-note explanation for how culture arises (drugs), it’s no surprise his work has often been characterized as pseudo-archeology.

TED respects and supports the exploration of unorthodox ideas, but the many misleading statements in both Sheldrake’s and Hancock’s talks, whether made deliberately or in error, have led our scientific advisors to conclude that our name and platform should not be associated with these talks.

Why texting and over-the-top providers need to consider 911, right now

The FCC issued their text-to-911 Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FNPRM) on Dec. 13 of last year. So what does all of this have to do with over-the-top (OTT) providers and why would anyone beyond the wireless carriers even care?

The FCC’s proposed requirements include any prospective providers of ‘interconnected text services,’ not just the wireless carriers. Based upon the continued evolution toward internet protocol technology and the FNPRM, it is reasonable to assume that OTT texting applications will be required to support text to 911 too.

INetwork has prepared an ebook to help you stay a step ahead, get smarter on this dynamic topic, and possibly even shape the solutions that will be deployed. While bandwidth cannot predict the timeline or the ultimate rules that result from the FNPRM, the indications are that the FCC is set to act soon.

Download your ebook here.

Windows Live Messenger users have a little over a month before they’re assimilated into the Skype collective. Before then, the team has been busy preparing Skype for the influx of new users that will be flooding in throughout April.

Skype announced that version 6.3 is now live for its Windows client. It’s a “maintenance release” which means that you won’t be seeing any major new features added, but the fixes contained therein are sure to make Skype a more stable and friendlier experience:

Despite all of the above fixes, Skype 6.3 does have one little problem. The software can no longer display birthday notifications on Windows. There is no current workaround, but it shouldn’t be too much of a concern. You probably spend a lot of time on Facebook, and it will make sure that you see every birthday notification.

If you don’t have a Skype account yet, you can grab the latest version here. If you do, it should download the update the next time you open the software.

Today, CBS has launched a brand new app optimized for both the iPhone and the iPad that will allows users to stream full episodes of the network’s daytime, primetime, and late night shows for free.

Daytime and Late-night shows will become available on the app 24 hours after airing on CBS. Most primetime content will take 8 days to hit the app after its original airing. The app will let users stream most of CBS’ most popular shows including NCIS, The Good Wife, CSI, How I Met Your Mother, and The Late Show with David Letterman.

The app not only features streaming shows, but personalized show trackers that will notify users when new episodes of the show become available on the app.

“We have been methodically and strategically finding new ways to satiate the appetite for our content on new platforms, while tapping into the tremendous revenue provided by doing so,” said Leslie Moonves, President and CEO of CBS. “Our announcement today achieves both of these objectives, while protecting our very healthy current ecosystem. In addition, by making our shows available on all the leading mobile devices out there, we are confident we will bring a whole new set of viewers to the CBS Television Network and build upon our standing as the #1 network in the business.”

CBS says that they will integrate the existing CBS Connect app by the beginning of the fall TV season. With that integration, the new CBS app will feature social feeds, live events with CBS personalities, and other extra content.

The app is currently only available on iOS, but will launch on both Android and Windows 8 later this year.

Since launching early last year, edX, the online learning site backed by Harvard and MIT, has emphasized its plans to be an open-source platform. Last week, in fact, at the SXSWedu education technology conference in Austin, while arguing that it’s good for online learning to have multiple players, edX’s president Anant Agarwal said that edX could be the “Linux” to Coursera’s “Microsoft.”

Well, on Thursday, the nonprofit took its first big step in that direction with the release of its XBlock SDK, the underlying architecture supporting edX course content.

On edX, all of the course content, from videos and text to interactive periodic tables and online circuit simulators, is built from XBlock, Agarwal said. By opening up this source code, he continued, developers around the world can now add their own content modules or “blades,” as edX calls them.

(He said the term “blade” comes from the idea that if the edX platform is like the handle of a razor, the architecture enables developers to plug in different blades.)

“We were hard-pressed to imagine how one organization could develop all the blades needed for all courses,” said Agarwal. “By making it open, we get the community to develop these blades using the XBlock architecture. In this way, we hope we can very rapidly increase the breadth of the kinds of things that we’re able to support.”

For now, Agarwal said, they’ve just open-sourced the XBlock software and architecture but over time they plan to open up the rest of the platform through an open-source license. At that point, it will be easier for educators, developers and students around the world to not just contribute new content but integrate with edX in a variety of ways.

In the last year, massive open online classes (MOOCs) provided by edX, as well as startups Coursera and Udacity, have gained considerable traction. Just yesterday, a California state senator proposed a plan that would enable public universities in the state to award college credit for online classes. Coursera and Udacity have enrolled more students and attracted more headlines but edX’s focus is on providing a high-quality, open learning platform. To date, it says about 675,000 students have enrolled and it has announced partnerships with 12 academic institutions (including Harvard and MIT).

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Google (GOOG) CEO Larry Page has decided to separate the company’s mapping and commerce units, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Both units were headed by senior vice president Jeff Huber, who will now step down from his position. The news comes only a day after Page revealed that Android boss Andy Rubin would also be stepping down from his position with the company, which opened the door for Chrome OS lead Sundar Pichai to head the lucrative mobile unit. Huber will now move to Google’s secretive X Lab to work with co-founder Sergey Brin. The mapping unit will become part of Google’s search team, while the commerce unit will merge into the advertising group.

A team of archaeologists has found a 600-year-old Chinese coin that was buried on the Kenyan island of Manda. Researchers say the find proves China and Africa were trading before European

“This finding is significant,” said Chapurukha Kusimba, co-leader of the expedition and curator of African anthropology at The Field Museum. “We know Africa has always been connected to the rest of the world, but this coin opens a discussion about the relationship between China and Indian Ocean nations.”

The coin itself is made of copper and silver, and has a square hole in the middle. Researchers say the coin is called a “Yongle Tongbao,” and was issued by Ming Dynasty Emperor Yongle. Emperor Yongle, who reigned from 1403 to 1425 CE, was known to have sent a man named Admiral Zheng He on a mission to explore the Indian Ocean.

“Zheng He was, in many ways, the Christopher Columbus of China,” said Kusimba. “It’s wonderful to have a coin that may ultimately prove he came to Kenya.”

Researchers say that the island of Manda held an “advanced civilization” from 200 CE to 1430 CE. After that, the island was abandoned and never again inhabited. Chinese expeditions dried up in the wake of Emperor Yongle’s death.

“We hope this and future expeditions to Manda will play a crucial role in showing how market-based exchange and urban-centered political economies arise and how they can be studied through biological, linguistic, and historical methodologies,” said Kusimba.

(Image courtesy John Weinstein/The Field Museum)