The FCC issued a notice of inquiry this week asking the general public about what constitutes a reasonable data cap and what speed constitutes a "broadband connection." The agency is doing some soul searching and may want to change the definitions on these issues. If data capping and broadband connection speeds are important to you, then this is a golden opportunity to give the agency you opinion and possibly have an effect on future policy.

British telecom company BT has apparently joined the ranks of OnLive investors that have been burned by Friday's announcement that the company would sell its assets off to a third-party entity controlled by Lauder Partners. BT said today that it is "highly likely" that it will be forced to write off its stake in a cloud-based video games service.

BT joins phone maker HTC, who said yesterday that it would lose its $40 million investment in the cloud-based gaming subscription service.

The CEO of middleware company BigWorld has resigned from the company. Earlier in the week it was announced that World of Tanks developer Wargaming had bought the middleware provider for $45 million. CEO John De Margheriti, who was one of the founders of the company, will step down at the end of this week. He will be replaced by co-founder Steve Wang, who will report directly to executives at Wargaming. Despite the departure, De Margheriti's statement seems to indicate an amicable exit from BigWorld.

The Kickstarter for the OUYA has ended, with organizers of the crowd funding round raking in a final amount of $8,596,475 from 63,416 backers. Organizers were originally aiming for $900,000.

According to the Kickstarter page for OUYA, Namco Bandai is in active discussions with the company to bring some of its franchises to the Android-powered $99 console.

In a shocking turn of events, Wargaming has purchased video game middleware company BigWorld for $45 Million, according to a GamesBeat report. Wargaming is best known for its wildly popular online game World of Tanks. That game has more than 35 million registered users who can play for free or buy virtual goods to enhance their game experience if they so choose.

According to this Securities and Exchange Commission filings (SEC), Microsoft plans to launch its Surface tablet alongside Windows 8 in or around the month of October.

"The next version of our operating system, Windows 8, will be generally available on October 26, 2012. At that time, we will begin selling the Surface, a series of Microsoft-designed and manufactured hardware devices," the filing reads.

According to this BBC report Facebook, eBay, Google and Amazon have joined a new lobbying group that will push issues they deem important in Washington. The new lobbying group is called The Internet Association, and will open up shop in Washington D.C. in September. They will handle political and regulatory issues in the capital.

While most of the major internet service providers are signing on to a voluntary "code of practice" that would bind them to providing open access to the Internet, not everyone believes in the idea of solidarity. The code pledges that signatories will vow to offer open and full access to the internet, not prioritize traffic to its own products and services or prohibit access to legal content. So far, BT, O2, TalkTalk, Sky, Be, Kcom, Giffgaff, Plusnet, Tesco Mobile, and Three have signed the code.

Using the Unity 3D game development engine, researchers from North Carolina State (who are leading the development), Arizona State University, and Indiana University, have developed a simulation that allows crime scene investigators to look at a crime scene from multiple angles.

Yesterday we reported that the makers of the Android-based OUYA console would be looking for funding outside of its Kickstarter campaign. Today her company is not seeking funding outside of the Kickstarter campaign and that it has no plans to find more investments at this time. In a statement Uhrman tried to clarify the record on funding, which is likely a touchy subject with fans who may have invested in the Kickstarter that has already generated over $5 million.

One of the reasons that the game cheat industry collapsed was because Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft created systems that had varying degrees of connectivity to online, achievements, and multiplayer. That's why products like the original Game Geneie from Galoob and the GameShark have long since died. But Hyperkin is jumping headfirst into the abandoned space with a brand new Game Genie. You may fondly remember the Game Genie as a popular cheat device for such consoles as the Sega Genesis and the Nintendo Entertainment System.

While the OUYA Android-based home console may be doing pretty well on Kickstarter (it's inching towards the $5 million mark), the creators of the console say that they plan to look for additional funding outside of Kickstarter. Some might balk at this new-found need to raise additional cash because the original crowd funding goal on Kickstarter was $950,000.

A Kickstarter campaign has been launched for OUYA, the new Android-based home game console backed by Jawbone Jambox and One Laptop Per Child designer Yves Behar, Ed Fries (inventor of the original Xbox), Amol Sarva of Peek, Amazon's Lab126 Muffi Ghadiali (who helped develop the Kindle), Peter Pham of Color, and Julie Uhrman of IGN as its founder and CEO.

While Ouya, (the $99 Android-based games console that promises an open-source-style high-concept developer ecosystem) may be just a concept at this stage, it's hard not to take notice of it when so many major players are attached to it already.

An article on Ars Technica details how an automatic update to Cisco routers added cloud support that required users to agree not to download pornography and copyrighted material. Luckily the article also describes how to roll that update back to an older version of the firmware so you can go back to using web-based router management.

Sony Computer Entertainment has acquired Dave Perry's cloud-based gaming service Gaikai for an estimated $380 million, the company announced this morning. Before the Electronic Entertainment Expo there were rumors circulating that Sony was going to buy a cloud-based gaming service - or at the very least announce that it was building one of its own. Another rumor last month was that Gaikai was looking for a buyout to the tune of an estimated $500 million. It turns out that all the rumors were true.

PC maker Lenovo revealed this week a new "no-contract" mobile broadband service, available exclusively to owners of select ThinkPad laptops. The cloud-based service is called Lenovo Mobile Access and comes with ThinkPad Classic and ThinkPad Edge brand laptops. According to the company, this service provides "pre-connected, always-on, customizable connectivity to the Internet and corporate networks" and is available in multiple territories including the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

The UK government has decided to take the rigid requirements out of information and communication technology (ICT) curriculum, instead allowing teachers to create their own lesson plans and approaches to providing students the things they need to learn. Teachers will still be required to teach ICT. The Department for Education’s consultation document announcing the change indicated that the mandatory guidelines were not getting the job done and that educators didn't care all that much for it.

Not to be outdone by OnLive's deal with TV manufacturer LG, Cloud gaming service Gaikai has announced a partnership with electronics manufacturer Samsung to bring its streaming game service to select Samsung television models. Samsung's game service powered by Gaikai will offer games from all of the company's publishing partners.

Cloud-based gaming service OnLive announced at the opening of the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles that the company has partnered with television manufacturer LG to provide gaming without the need for hardware. All consumers will need is OnLive's gamepad. The company also revealed a number of new services that it plans to roll into its gaming service.

If you think Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 made the most money for Activision in the first quarter, then you would be wrong. According to the company the biggest money maker for them in 2012 so far is Skylanders. Because the game encourages players to buy action figures that unlock additional characters and levels, it makes a ton of money they say.

Polygon has an interesting report on a possible competitor looking to move into the space currently filled by cloud-based game streaming services Gaikai and OnLive. The company is called Ubitus and it provides what the publication categorizes as "white label" cloud-based gaming services to a number of devices including cellular carriers and internet service providers. 

The White House Council on Women and Girls will host a Girls in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) event tomorrow (April 24) moderated by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. The panelists will share their experiences and encourage young women to follow in their footsteps or blaze a trail of their own. The event will also include the first public screening of "Girls in STEM," a video featuring girls who participated in the 2012 White House Science Fair.

At a recent Google-sponsored Big Tent event in Mountainview, Jennifer Pahlka, the founder of and executive director of Code for America, participated in a "fire side" chat with Google's SVP, David Drummond, about her various initiatives related to using technology to solve public sector problems and civic life in general.

It looks like Netflix wants some representation in Washington D.C. and has taken steps to set up a political action committee (PAC) called "Flixpac." This will allow the Internet-based streaming entertainment company to give up to $5,000 to a candidate per election year and up to $15,000 to a political party annually.

What started out as a PS3 hardware hacking project has turned into a full-fledged project looking for some Kickstarter funding magic. The technology is simply called an "open source tracking device," and is designed to tell you where your PS3 is by texting or emailing. The project is a little more complicated than that, of course, but that the basic premise.

While many of us wait to get our hands on Raspberry Pi - the tiny $25 - $35 computer - one person that got his hands on it has used it to create a ZX Spectrum emulator. Andy Taylor (the guy responsible for the UK Computing Museum) has ported Fuze, an emulator for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, to Raspberry Pi and has put a video of it running on YouTube.

According to CNBC's freshly released All-America Economic survey, Apple products are now in over half of America's homes. The report notes that 51 percent, or 55 million, of U.S. households now own at least one Apple device (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Mac or Macbook). The survey says that the average household has 1.6 Apple devices, but also concludes that most Americans own three Apple devices. Around one-quarter of those surveyed said that they planned to buy one more Apple device in the next year.

"Hello world," begins the first post at the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) new tech blog on Wordpress. The first post is written by Ed Felten, Chief Technologist at the FTC, who goes on to say that the point of the blog is to talk candidly about technology in a way that is "sophisticated enough to be interesting to hard-core techies, but straightforward enough to be accessible to the broad public that knows something about technology but doesn’t qualify as expert."