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For me, there are no worse time-sucks than social media and online shopping. Online games, however, have never been a problem. Until now.

Tip or Skip, which launched today with $2 million in funding from 500 Startups, John Ason, Corinthian Group, and angel investors, combines a Fancy or Pinterest-like online shopping experience with a game element.

Started by two childhood friends -- Michael Weiksner, a persuasive-technology specialist who has studied under B.J. Fogg, and Nathaniel McNamara, a mobile-commerce specialist -- the site aims to keep shoppers engaged by appealing to their trend-spotting sensibilities. The idea is that if you … Read more

Like rival Dish, DirecTV has access to technology that could allow millions of subscribers to automatically skip TV commercials, but executives don't see much reason to offer it to consumers.

Mike White, CEO of largest satellite provider in the U.S., said at a media conference today that DirecTV bought the technology five years ago from a company called Replay TV but has not seen a reason to offer it to consumers, according to a Reuters account.

"We haven't chosen to use it," White said at the Reuters Global Media and Technology Summit in New York. &… Read more

Dish's new ad-skipping feature has aroused anger among TV broadcasters, but the company's chairman sees it as a wake-up call to the industry.

In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen defended Ad Hop, the new feature that lets Dish viewers skip advertisements.

Cheap Web-based TV is a threat to pay TV, believes Ergen, a trend created in part by the networks themselves because of their failure to develop ads better targeted toward viewers. Ergen is hoping Ad Hop will convince TV networks to create "more meaningful" ads that people won'… Read more

In today's show, we're putting filters on Facebook, paying with our phones and watching the networks get hoppin' mad:

A battle is brewing in court between the major television networks and Dish Network's commercial-skipping Hopper DVR. The fight centers around a feature in the Hopper DVR called Auto Hop, which lets users instantly skip commercials for a show recorded the day prior from a major network during prime time. (No need for a fast-forward button!) Fox, NBC and CBS are suing Dish, arguing that commercial skipping violates copyright. And Fox added another layer to it, saying that … Read more

BOSTON -- Discovery Communications CEO David Zaslav warned Dish Network that it's playing with fire when it comes to a new commercial hopping DVR technology.

During a panel here at the National Cable and Telecommunications Association's annual tradeshow, Zaslav told CNN's Erin Burnett that the new feature Dish Network introduced recently on its Hopper DVR, which skips advertising during shows that are recorded from broadcast TV, could disrupt the industry in a negative way. He said the model is unsustainable since program owners need the advertising revenue to help cover the cost of their shows.

Dish co-founder … Read more

In today's show, we're Binging our friends, casting spells in Kindle's library, and bracing ourselves for the return of the browser wars:

Microsoft's Bing search engine now includes Facebook integration. When you search for something on Bing, a side panel will pop up and show which of your friends might help you with your search. So for example, if you search for hotels in Chicago, Bing will point out which of your friends live in Chicago.

Microsoft is also in the news today for stirring up the browser wars again. According to Mozilla, Microsoft is preventing … Read more

What feature have viewers been waiting for since the "beginning of television?"

According to Dish, it's commercial-free TV, and it's added a new "Auto Hop" feature to its Hopper HD DVR system that allows you to jump over all commercials in recorded prime-time programs from ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC when viewed a day after airing. … Read more

My Comcast DVR died last week, so down I went to my local Comcast office to exchange it for a new box. Although I lost weeks' worth of Modern Family (which, inexplicably, isn't offered On Demand), my DVR's death came at a good time because Comcast recently received a new fleet of cable boxes and sent me home with the Motorola RGN200N.

Years ago, I had programmed a 30-second skip button for my old Comcast DVR on my old silver remote. It was a simple process:

1. Press the Cable button at the top of the remote

2. … Read more

Skip Tunes is a 99-cent app that puts a convenient control in your Mac's menu bar for controlling music in iTunes, Spotify, and Rdio.

When I'm working, I'm often listening to music. And when I'm working, I can get very lazy focused, to the point where opening iTunes or Spotify to find out the name of a song I don't recognize feels like an arduous chore. (In my defense, iTunes can be slow to appear from its hidden state.) Because of this, I found the 99 cents I spent on Skip Tunes in the Mac App Store to be money well spent.… Read more