On Microsoft's Xbox Wire blog, it says that "Coming in June, anyone with an Xbox will be able to access popular entertainment experiences – whether or not you have an Xbox Live Gold membership. This includes great gaming apps like Machinima, Twitch and Upload, popular video services like Netflix, Univision Deportes, GoPro, Red Bull TV and HBO GO, sports experiences like the NFL app for Xbox One, MLB.TV, NBA Game Time, NHL Game Center and more." For years, users had to up to Live Gold premium status and also pay for subscriptions to each service.

A new survey of inventors, researchers and entrepreneurs has a pretty optimistic view of the Internet of things and many are pretty confident we'll be connected to all kinds of things via the Internet in the decade ahead.

Yes, online video is finally eating into TV ad dollars, as brand and agency heads tell The Wall Street Journal. "For us, it's really about shifting to where audiences are," said Laura Desmond, CEO of Starcom MediaVest, which said it redirected north of $500 million away from TV over the past 12 months, most of which went to the Web. Slowly but surely, other brands taking part in the big shift include MasterCard, Mondelez International, and Verizon Wireless.

To a degree, it's go where your advertisers are, and if you are looking for the ad community, 'Mad Men' is the place to be.

Netflix made a peering deal with Comcast to improve its speed to download and it that's helped. But still, downloads are faster in Canada

Mozilla is indeed going ahead with plans to sell sponsored tiles on its new-tab page. “Mozilla -- which doesn’t always see eye-to-eye with advertisers -- first introduced this program … in February,” TechCrunch writes. “Now, it’s starting to experiment with different layouts of its new new-tab page.” A recent blog post by Jonathan Nightingale, Mozilla’s VP of Firefox, was misinterpreted by some to mean that the company was reconsidering its sponsored tiles program.

Time Warner has had talks about acquiring Fullscreen Inc. a  popular YouTube video network, but it's got to get in line with Yahoo and Relativity, according to sources. The story was first reported by Bloomberg.    

New

China's Alibaba Group, which is readying for a big U.S. initial public offering, is known as an e-commerce titan but it's been busily expanding into other rising industries. Here's a closer look at those businesses, which include cloud computing, mobile messaging, and investments in online video, social media as well as bricks and mortar retail and delivery networks.

Comcast is reportedly moving aggressively into online video advertising. “Comcast will aim to help ‘premium’ video producers such as Disney, FOX, Viacom and Time Warner manage and sell ad space on Web-based video services,” the Information reports. “To do so, Comcast will rely on its traditional NBC TV and cable ad-sales businesses … and include the ability to serve ads on shows viewed on-demand through cable boxes or on its Xfinity website.”