Autor: HCFG

Phill Spencer irá liderar a equipe Xbox, que incluí Xbox Live, Xbox Music, Xbox Video e Microsoft Studios.

Anyone who has been following the evolution of the media for the past few years knows that everyone is now a publisher, and that includes brands like Red Bull and Coca-Cola, both of whom act more like digital-media entities than some mainstream journalistic outlets. As media theorist and author Clay Shirky has said, publishing is no longer an industry — it’s a button.

But it’s not just advertisers who are becoming media entities: advocacy groups and non-profits are as well, as Dan Gillmor pointed out in a recent post at Slate.

As Gillmor notes, the recent report on the future of the media industry from the Pew Research Center talked a lot about the decline of traditional media like newspapers and magazines, and also talked about the rise of new entities like Vox Media and First Look Media. But it didn’t really dwell on either the explosion of…

If you’re a frequenter of OKCupid using Mozilla’s Firefox browser, you’re going to notice something quite different Monday afternoon when trying to visit the site. In place of the home page of the dating site, which is popular among young adults, Firefox users are seeing an open letter from the company that asks users to boycott Mozilla’s browser due to new CEO Brendan Eich’s stance on gay marriage.

The body of the open letter reads as follows:

Politics is normally not the business of a website, and we all know there’s a lot more wrong with the world than misguided CEOs. So you might wonder why we’re asserting ourselves today. This is why: we’ve devoted the last ten years to bringing people—all people—together. If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we’ve worked so hard to bring about would be illegal. Equality for gay…

If you have the urgent desire to pay for embroidered pillows or a pound of Ugandan coffee using bitcoin, then Square will scratch that itch. On its engineering blog, Square announced plans on Monday to accept bitcoin on any transaction in its online merchant hub, Square Market.

We’ve started to see a lot of individual businesses accept bitcoin — from pizzerias to coffee sellers — but lately online and mobile payment processors have started to take an interest in the crypto-currency. Stripe last week announced a pilot program that will eventually make bitcoin a payment option for all its merchants. And now Square is making it accepted tender to the more than 50,000 merchants that use its online storefront.

Square merchants will actually get their money in their home currency, just as they would a regular credit card transaction. Square, however, is implementing a system making it relatively…

Rdio is the next top-tier name to work with Google’s(s goog) Chromecast streaming stick. On Monday, the music service said its entire 20 million song catalog can be streamed to television through the Chromecast by using the Rdio app on iOS(s aapl) and Android(s goog). Don’t skip a step if you don’t use those mobile apps though: Rdio says its web client can also be used to stream music to a Chromecast. Using the apps, Rdio users can tune in to their favorite songs or create a personalized station for streaming, along with album art, to a Chromecast. In addition to Rdio, Crackle (s SNE) and VUDU (S WMT) also launched new apps that support Chromecast Monday.

The Federal Communications Commission on Monday voted unanimously to open up 100 MHz of wireless spectrum to Wi-Fi use, which would increase the number of frequencies available to unlicensed wireless networks by 15 percent.

The airwaves in the 5 GHz band have always been unlicensed, but they’ve had much more stringent rules attached to them to prevent devices from interfering with other users, specifically government telemetry networks and Globalstar’s satellite ground links. But in 2013 the Defense Department said it no longer needed the band. Earlier this year Globalstar reached an agreement with the FCC, which would open the band up to both satellite and Wi-Fi use, clearing the way for today’s decision.

FCC Commissioners (L to R): Commissioner Ajit Pai, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, Chairman Tom Wheeler, Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and Commissioner Michael O’Rielly

There will still be some restrictions in how the band can be used by Wi-Fi…