(Photo: Angelfire)

Digital music licensing revenues surpassed those from radio for the first time ever, mostly thanks to Google Play and Xbox. [The Guardian]

If this really is Mark Zuckerberg's first ever Angelfire page, it's just as mortifying as yours was. [Gizmodo]

Q1 of 2013 yielded a strangely low number of IPOs: only eight companies went public in the three-month period. [Silicon Valley Business Journal]

Not to be eclipsed by Microsoft, Samsung is getting its own brick and mortar stores, but with a twist: they'll exist solely inside Best Buys. Guess they really like the Geek Squad? [AllThingsD]

The Facebook phone is expected to be announced today. Yay? [New York Times]

Rather than go the Starbucks route and partner with Square or follow other national retailers (like Duane Reade, RadioShack, Banana Republic, etc.) into Google Wallet, the group is going rogue, arguing that Google and other telecom providers--AT&T and T-Mobile have a payments app called Isis; Verizon and Vodafone have one as well--don't understand customers like they do. The retailers behind MCX point out that they have a combined $1 trillion in annual sales and "serve nearly every smartphone user in the U.S."

Terry Scully, Target's president of financial and retail services told the New York Times:

"What we are looking for is a broad, seamless experience across all retail formats," Scully said.

Of course, the idea of downloading a different mobile payments app depending on the store hardly feels seamless. At this rate, consumers will have to keep track of which imperceptible coalition each retailer belongs to, as though they're a bunch of politically-aligned nation-states. Not to mention the discomfort of uploading your credit card info it each. As the Journal notes:

The proliferation of mobile-payments systems might confuse consumers, skeptics say. But participants say the rival efforts reflect a predicament: Each industry needs the other to make mobile payments succeed, but each group wants to lead the way.

Even among people with a cellphone and a bank account, only 11 percent used mobile payments last year, according to a survey from Gartner. However, a recent report from Juniper Research says mobile payments is expected to almost quadruple to $1.3 trillion annually by 2017. Between now and then, a little federating might do the industry good.

(Photo: Best Buy)

Blame Michael Phelps fever for our oversight, but we seem to have missed a milestone in Silicon Alley's rise to celebrity status. This past weekend, "Breaking Bad" viewers were treated to the visage of Dennis Crowley, staring back at them from a Best Buy commercial. Best Buy released two different thirty second spots starring the Foursquare cofounder, one of which is also running during the Olympics.

Mr. Crowley, the de facto poster boy for New York's tech scene, doesn't shy away from the limelight. There was last year's print ad for Gap (alongside the defoundered Naveen Selvadurai), as well as his upcoming debut in Vanity Fair. "Have a SAG card yet?," Deep Focus CEO Ian Schafer quipped on Twitter. 

All the signifiers of a proper techie are on display, including Mr. Crowley's glow-in-the-dark, lime green Nooka watch, for those who prefer to read time in a 12 dot display, as well as a Nike+ FuelBand, for all your self-quantifying needs.

The commercials, first reported by AllThingsD, are part of Best Buy's "College Innovator" campaign. In one, Mr. Crowley talks about how innovation in smartphones enabled services like Foursquare. In the other, he plugs Best Buy's contest awarding four students a cut of its $100,000 fund to support "the next big technology-based innovation."

Foursquare's Erin Gleason told AllThingsD that the spot was partly to "introduce the all-new foursquare to a large audience," but there's also a philanthropic component. Mr. Crowley is donating his (undisclosed) fee to CampInteractive, a non-profit that provides technology education to underprivileged students. Mr. Crowley, Ms. Gleason, and other Foursquare employees are all involved with the initiative.

As for Best Buy's interest in a CEO whose three-year old startup just launched its first revenue product last week, perhaps it's best to employ Mr. Crowley's advice from the commercial, "Avoid the haters."

Gloria Berg, who was in the store with her children at the time, complained to the manager. In an interview with a local TV station, Mrs. Berg told of the the manager's interesting response to her concerns:

She says the manager told her someone had used the store's WI-FI to upload the image to the TV's.

She says the manager told her the same thing had happened the night before and there was nothing the store could do about it.

"They, like, brush it off like it's...who cares? Nobody cares. It's pornography. And we are getting adjusted to that kind of mentality. That's why we are losing our morals," Berg says.

The news station couldn't get a response from the local Best Buy but the corporate office issued a statement, stating that "two individuals" had hacked into the store's wireless signal "to broadcast inappropriate content on a smart television display."

Best Buy apologized for the incident(s) and said it would work to "ensure that it does not happen again."

Local law enforcement is investigating.

Techdirt recently wondered if Smart TVs were "not such a smart idea," noting that "the Smart TV is just a sales vehicle dreamt up and promoted by the TV OEMs. They had a bang-up decade updating everyone to flat panels, then pushing the upgrade to 1080P. They've had less success with 3D, and are looking for the hook to make another upgrade worthwhile."

That's practical, but in an age when the amorphous hacktivist collective Anonymous appears to worry even the N.S.A., the way Smart TVs are displayed inside big box retailers like Best Buy (or Wal-Mart) may present yet another opportunity for hackers to wreak havoc on the sensibilities of customers like Mrs. Berg or even launch an Anon-style protest to prove a point.

Or, like the "Max Headroom" hacker 25 years ago, just show unsuspecting shoppers video of themselves getting spanked with flyswatters.