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Dish is pitching other companies’ cellphones and services.

Blockbuster owner Dish Network, looking to jump into the wireless business, has started selling smartphones on the movie rental chain’s website.

The Douglas County-based company will reportedly also begin reselling phones at Blockbuster’s brick-and-mortar stores, though no time frame has been disclosed.

Citing unnamed sources, Bloomberg News says Dish will make the move “as a test” for its planned foray into wireless, hoping to “learn the ropes of selling phones to consumers.”

Clearly, the company isn’t Read more…

DirecTV and Gannett have reached an agreement.

UPDATE | 9:15 A.M. Saturday, Dec. 1, 2012: DirecTV said this morning that it has a deal to prevent the blackout, though terms weren’t disclosed. “Gannett and DirecTV have reached an agreement regarding DirecTV’s continued retransmission of Gannett stations,” DirecTV spokesman Robert Mercer said.

Less than two months after settling a messy dispute over retransmission fees with Dish Network, Gannett Broadcasting is once again going down to the wire in negotiations with Dish’s satellite-TV rival DirecTV.

Gannett’s KUSA, which includes 9News, Sunday Night Football and other programming, could go dark for DirecTV subscribers starting at midnight Friday.

DirecTV, the nation’s largest satellite-TV operator, said Gannett has refused a request to extend talks, threatening to black out channels as a “negotiating tactic.”

“We remain in productive discussions Read more…

A photo that purportedly shows a winning Powerball ticket.

Oh, Facebook.

More than 350,000 users on the social networking site have shared a photo purportedly showing one of the two winning tickets of the $588 million Powerball jackpot. The reason?

Accompanying the image, uploaded by a Facebook user named Nolan Daniels, is this statement: “Looks like I won’t be going to work EVER!!!! Share this photo and I will give a random person 1 million dollars!”

Problem is, the numbers are out of order on the ticket, a clear indication that it is a doctored image. Read more…

Colorado phone bills could drop by about $1 a month as part of plans to overhaul the High Cost Fund.

In 2013, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission will identify areas in the state that have at least three options for telephone service. The determination will help regulators decide whether a carrier should continue receiving so-called High Cost Fund support for offering service in those areas.

Preliminary estimates suggest that Colorado ratepayers may be subsidizing phone service for about 150,000 CenturyLink subscribers that have at least four alternatives. An overhaul of the $54 million High Cost Fund would likely mean slightly lower bills for the majority of phone subscribers in the state. Below is an overview of the planned reform, which has been on the agenda since 2010.

What is the High Cost Fund?

Officially called the High Cost Support Mechanism, the program was established in the mid-1990s before the proliferation of Read more…

Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post

CU Boulder student Mike Abdy.

Jack Wishna, a prominent Las Vegas dealmaker and music promoter whose clients included pop legend Michael Jackson, was reportedly found dead at his home Tuesday.

Wishna was a mentor to and longtime family friend of University of Colorado at Boulder student Mike Abdy, a wunderkind who heads a local venture capital firm while majoring in sociology. Abdy’s Tiforp Business Ventures has an $850,000 investment in Rock City Club, a Las Vegas-based social music network founded by Wishna.

“It’s the most tragic thing that could happen,” Abdy said Wednesday from Boulder. “He was a close friend of mine. He was a great mentor to me, from setting up friends with interviews to getting us concert tickets. He was a real inspiration.” Read more…

UPDATE | 1:22 P.M. Nov. 26, 2012 – Added link to updated trackpad driver from Lenovo at the end of the post and corrected photo cutline.

I sold my 11-inch MacBook Air and bought a Lenovo Yoga for $1,000. Good or bad move?

After spending two weeks with the hottest Windows 8 Ultrabook around — the Yoga is flying off Best Buy store shelves — I have no regrets, even though I lost about $350 in the trade and the laptop has some drawbacks that require third-party fixes.

In case you’ve missed the commercials, the Yoga’s patented hinge technology allows the screen to fold back 360 degrees, transforming the device into a tablet. It is an eye-catching and valuable feature.

Most reviews, from Walt Mossberg to Wired, have noted that the Yoga serves well as a laptop, but not so much as a tablet. I agree that the machine’s size is not ideal for a tablet – a 13-inch screen is slightly too big and 3 pounds is a little too heavy. But the Yoga still works for me as a slate, in bed or on the couch.

I won’t just rehash all of the points noted by other reviewers. Instead, I’ll use this blog post to share a few tips/hacks/modifications that will, for the most part, fix some of the highlighted drawbacks of the Yoga. Read more…

Rich Baer

UPDATE | 10:24 A.M. – Posted correction on Baer joining Liberty Interactive, formerly known as Liberty Media, and added details on the differences between the two.

Former Qwest general counsel Rich Baer is assuming the same title with Douglas County-based Liberty Interactive Corp.

Baer currently serves as the chief legal officer for UnitedHealth Group in Minnesota. He leaves that position Jan. 1 and will return to Denver when he takes over as general counsel for John Malone’s Liberty.

Baer served as general counsel and chief administrative officer for Denver-based Qwest from 2002 until the company was acquired by CenturyLink in 2011. During his tenure, Qwest faced its fair share of legal woes stemming from the Joe Nacchio-era accounting scandal. Read more…

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Dish’s wireless plans could be derailed by FCC rules.

Dish Network said Tuesday a proposed order from the Federal Communications Commission that would set restrictions on how the satellite-TV provider uses its spectrum could derail the company’s plans to enter the wireless business.

Stanton Dodge, Dish’s executive vice president and general counsel, said the order is “significantly flawed.”

“While the FCC would grant full terrestrial rights, its proposal to lower our power and emissions levels could cripple our ability to enter the business,” he said Read more…

The Denver Post

Colorado regulators have capped the high cost fund at $54 million annually.

Colorado regulators took the initial step Tuesday of deregulating telephone service in the state and eliminating a program that reimburses carriers for providing service in high cost, rural areas.

The Colorado Public Utilities Commission adopted rules that will serve as the framework for determining which areas in the state have sufficient competition and no longer need to be rate regulated.

“This rulemaking is an initial step in a general overhaul of the telecommunications rules,” said PUC spokesman Terry Bote.

The PUC started looking at telecom reform in 2010. The Colorado Office of Consumer Counsel Read more…

Luke Beatty is the new managing director at TechStars in Boulder

Associated Content founder Luke Beatty will join TechStars in Boulder as managing director.

Beatty previously served as vice president and general manager for Yahoo after selling Denver-based Associated Content to the Internet giant in 2010.

Beatty left Yahoo this year and served as an entrepreneur in residence this summer for TechStars, a nationally recognized tech accelerator program based in Boulder.

“After spending the summer as an EIR with TechStars, I really look forward to joining the team on a full-time basis,” Beatty said. “I believe that entrepreneurship solves many of the world’s problems and the TechStars community Read more…