Remember Bamboom -- the service that lets user watch select pieces of TV content on their wireless devices? Well, it’s been renamed Aereo, and taken an investment from Barry Diller -- “and/or his IAC Web holding company,” AllThingsD reports. Otherwise “the concept appears to be the same: The service will let users stream broadcast TV stations to their Internet-connected devices, wherever they are.” The startup is expected to host a press event at Diller’s IAC headquarters on Tuesday, during which it will most likely detail a new strategy, and service specifics. Press materials describe Diller as a “minority investor” in …

Aided by the popularity of tablets, worldwide mobile connections will approach 10 billion by 2016, according to new estimates from Cisco. The networking giant expects the bulk of these connections -- 8 billion -- to take the form of cell phones, while it also foresees a significant rise in tablets -- 5 billion -- “and that's not even counting all those WiFi-only models floating around,” Engadget notes. Cisco tallies Wi-Fi traffic in a different forecast, which is expected to be released later in the year. “If the market does indeed swell to 5 billion cellular-connected tablets, that would represent a …

Still defending its decision to combine various user data, Google reportedly told the FTC that the upcoming changes in its privacy policy are in compliance with the company’s settlement with the federal government last year. In a self-assessment report -- delivered to the FTC in January and obtained by Politico Friday -- Google apparently lays out the steps the company has taken internally to make sure it complies with the FTC’s consent decree finalized in November over the firm’s privacy policies. “Google says the efforts represent ‘exceptional lengths’ by the company to keep users informed how the Internet firm collects, …

Hot picture-posting network Pinterest has surpassed 10 million registered users, 9 million monthly Facebook-connected users, and 2 million daily Facebook users, reports TechCrunch, citing data from Inside Network’s AppData. In particular, “With gorgeous photography, and links to shopping sites, Pinterest is becoming an obsession for flocks of women,” TechCrunch notes. Indeed, AppData and Facebook’s advertising tool show that over 97% of Pinterest’s Facebook fans are women. “The stunningly feminine fan base could be a telling proxy for Pinterest’s actual user base, which totals over 10.4 million considering that’s how many users follow the official ‘Pinterest’ account,” TechCrunch suggests. Meanwhile, over 20% of its fast-growing …

We’d compare MySpace to a cat, but even felines only have nine lives. Far more resilient, the once reigning social network is still scratching, and actually growing at a respectable rate. Since December, in fact -- when MySpace introduced a new music player -- the site says it has signed up 1 million new users. “When MySpace changed ownership last June, it was in free fall,” The New York Times remembers. Now, according to new comScore data, monthly traffic on MySpace rose in January, the first increase in almost a year. “At 25.1 million, it was an improvement of 4 …

Crying hypocrisy, TechCrunch claims that VEVO -- the record label-owned video hub -- showed a pirated stream of an ESPN football game at a recent PowerStation event. As we’re reminded, VEVO’s owners -- Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Abu Dhabi Media Group -- represent the core of the Recording Industry Association of America, which regularly attacks consumers for illegal file-sharing. Reached for comment, VEVO said that the event was produced by a creative agency called Continuum Entertainment, and that there were several other companies involved. “However, the venue was broken into different sections, and the televisions in question …

To the chagrin of data-hungry marketers, “Do Not Track” technologies continue to improve and evolve. A free tool released this week was designed specifically to address many of the concerns raised by a recent study, which found that anti-tracking technology was too confusing and difficult to use. “It's called Do Not Track Plus, and it works seamlessly with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari,” reports PCWorld. "Not only that, but it can increase page load speeds by up to four times, its maker says.” A beta version of Abine's Do Not Track Plus (DNT+) was released last year, initially just …

Elsewhere in Europe, Google could possibly open its first standalone retail store in Dublin. According to a filing obtained by Bloomberg, the Google Store would be open to the public and sell unspecified “Google merchandise,” Google’s Irish unit said in a local planning application. “While we do have the option to open retail space, we are examining all potential uses,” the California-based company said in an e-mailed statement. “No final decision has been taken.” As tentative as that sounds, Bloomberg still suggests that retail could be a new front in Google’s competition with Apple, whose 361 stores have surely helped …

European design firm Dassault Systèmes has acquired Netvibes -- a sentiment analytics dashboard that helps Fortune 500 companies track their social media presence throughout the real-time Web. Not your typical buyer of social analytics startups, Dassault is a “3D experience” design company -- which lets designers “virtualize” how products will work in the real world, according to TechCrunch’s Alexis Tsotsis. The acquisition actually seems jarring at first, but Netvibes CEO Freddy Mini says the buy makes sense in terms of "connecting what people say about a product to its design process through the Netvibes dashboard.” In a statement, Dassault President and CEO Bernard …

In the face of broad criticism, Google+ saw impressive growth toward the end of 2011, according to new data from traffic analyst Compete. Remarkably, Google’s social network saw nearly half as many unique visitors as Twitter did in December of 2011. To be precise, Compete says that Twitter had 40,411,065 unique visitors during that month, and Google+ had a very sold 20 million. “After seeing a slight dip in visitors in October of last year, it looks like Google+ righted the ship and had a strong end of the year,” notes The Next Web -- “which is good news for …