An anonymous reader writes “Within a few months of launching, Snapchat has made an enormous and lasting impact on the culture of communication on the Internet – and we should all be grateful. They have simplified a security process enough to the point that anybody can use it, while validating the market of the next generation of a href=”http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarunwadhwa/2013/05/22/why-we-should-celebrate-snapchat-and-encourage-ephemeral-communication/”>privacy-preserving ephemeral communication. Most importantly, we may finally get a break from the forced permanence of the Facebook and Google world, where everything you do and share is a data point to be monetized and re-sold to the highest bidder.”
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Nintendo is trying to get people to buy the new Wii U, but it just isn’t working, according to recent sales numbers. Now, the Japanese gaming giant is hoping that helping developers port their smartphone content to the home gaming console with conversion software will help entice buyers, according to the Japan Times.
Editor’s note: Sergio Monsalve is a Partner at Norwest Venture Partners where he is focused on early and growth investments in e-commerce, consumerized SaaS, consumer finance, and educational technologies. 
Apple is said to be getting very close to nailing down streaming licensing agreements with Universal Music Group and Warner Music, according to sources speaking to The Verge. The report follows news from the NY Post that claimed Apple was well under where labels were expecting in terms of its streaming rates, and now says that Apple’s service will pay fees pretty much on par with those paid by Pandora. If Apple does launch this service, it’s about to become a lot harder to operate as a competitor in this space.
Man was not meant to spend all day hunched over a dimly lit screen; disturbingly high incidences of obesity, joint pain and fatigue is our body’s not-so-subtle way of saying it wants to get up and move around. After piloting a walking desk, a standing desk attached to a treadmill, for a month, I’m convinced they should become the default workstation. Immediately, my daily calorie burn jumped 30.7% and I lost 3lbs and a percent of body fat in a week. I also experienced less joint pain throughout the day. What Is a Walking Desk? The Lifespan TR-1200-DT5 places a square standing desk atop standard size treadmill (74″). Instead of a large front dashboard, a relatively discrete control panel for speed is attached on the body-facing side of the desk. Speed varies from .4 MPH to 4MPH (about the pace of a light run) Getting Started With Slow But Steady Adjustments Migrating to the walking desk was relatively easy: I just plopped my laptop and monitor down on the squarish 46-inch desk and got to work. The intuitive interface lets you choose several tracking mechanisms for calorie burn and distance. The first day I couldn’t walk more than an hour at a time before I felt like I was losing concentration. It also takes some getting used to walking like a tyrannosaurus rex (arms tucked-in and elbows bent at the keyboard). At first, I would work for an hour walking, and then sit for 30. The first day I walked about 4 hours. Now I only rest once a day. It also took a bit to develop the musculature in my upper back to support raised arms for hours on end. This is no longer a problem. After experimenting with different speeds, I now vary between .8 and 1.2, picking up speed in the late morning early afternoon to offset the nature fatigue that preceeds the morning news rush. Every-so-often I have to learn on my elbows or straddle the rails to take a break. Burning More Calories While its intuitive to think that walking for an extra 5-8 hours a day would burn more calories, recent scientific evidence suggested otherwise. A study of “exergames”, video games which require full-body movement, found “no evidence that children receiving the active video games were more active in general, or at any time, than children receiving the inactive video games,” concluded the research
This week’s Ask A VC show put Bain Capital Ventures’ managing director 
On Feb 20th, Sony is holding a press conference in New York for which we assume is the PlayStation 4. Yet, is that really the smartest move that the company could make? With the argument that the PS idea’s time has gone, wouldn’t Sony be better served by rejuvenating their entire operation (including its brand) and letting go of the past?
Facebook used to build the future, but since the mobile era began it’s been chasing what’s next — Buying Instagram, reskinning acquisition Beluga as Messenger, copying Snapchat as Poke, and now getting beat to animated photos by Twitter’s Vine and Cinemagram. If Facebook doesn’t bust out its crystal ball, it could get picked apart by visionary competitors, or lose its reputation for innovation.
Facebook has a 
The WSJ reports this morning that Apple is testing out Apple TV set (as opposed to set-top box) designs, though that testing remains “early stage.” Apple is specifically working on high-res TVs according to the reports, trialling a few different designs, working with a variety of suppliers including Hon Hai (Foxconn) and Sharp on the new TV designs. But a TV being tested by Apple shouldn’t shock anyone.
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