On Tuesday night, shortly after First Lady Michelle Obama’s DNC speech, YouTube reportedly put a copyright blocking message on its live-stream video of the event. Making matters worse -- because YouTube is the official streaming partner of the DNC -- would-be watchers apparently encountered the same blocking message on BarackObama.com and DemConvention2012. Reached by Wired.com, a YouTube spokesman downplayed the blockage, explaining in an email: “After tonight’s live stream ended, YouTube briefly showed an incorrect error message … Neither the live stream nor any of the channel’s videos were affected.”

How much faster is Verizon’s 4G mobile broadband network than, say, T-Mobile’s 3G network? Taking the guesswork out of such discussions, the Federal Communications Commission says it plans to start reporting on mobile broadband speeds nationwide. “The FCC will begin a review process of the mobile networks with a meeting Sept. 21, with the goal of providing customers with a report card of sorts for those networks,” VentureBeat reports.

Frequent fliers, rejoice! Routehappy -- a new “flight experience” search engine -- made its official debut this week. Bolstered by $1.5 million in fresh funding, the New York-based startup is hoping to transform the way consumers search for flights. Users, as GigaOm explains, “don’t search for the cheapest flight like Kayak or Expedia, but the best flight: which seats are the roomiest, which planes have Wi-Fi, electrical outlets, and seatback video and who has the most on-time flights.”

These days, it looks like the only thing consumers like doing less that leaving voicemails, is listening to them. In data prepared for USA Today, Web phone company Vonage says the number of voicemail messages left on user accounts was down 8% from July 2011 through 2012, while retrieved voice mail fell 14% during the same period. “With the rise of texting, instant chat and transcription apps, more people are ditching the venerable tool that once revolutionized the telephone business.”  

BBC's iPlayer app should soon let paying subscribers download programs for viewing offline at no additional cost. The update is expected to be released today for iPhone and iPad, and for Android devices "in the near future," according to a report in The Guardian. “The development marks a significant shift for BBC iPlayer, which has previously only allowed viewers to stream programmes to tablets and mobile devices with broadband connections or download them to watch on a desktop computer.”

As Facebook’s stock price continues to crater, The New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin lays into David Ebersman, the social network’s chief financial officer. Could one man be to blame for the company losing more than $50 billion in market value in three months? Yes, says Sorkin, “It is David Ebersman’s fault.” Among his many sins, “Ebersman appears to have badly misjudged the demand for Facebook’s I.P.O.,” Sorkin admonishes.