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Groupon charges $1,000 to name your baby for you

Father's Day is coming up on Sunday. What's the ultimate gift for a dad who has a little one on the way? Relieve him of the burden of the baby name selection process, provided mom is willing to go along.

The mechanism for achieving this comes from the unlikely source of Groupon. The self-proclaimed "World's Foremost Authority in Baby Naming" will name your baby Clembough. Yep, Clembough. Boy or girl, it doesn't matter. Clembough is what you're getting.

Even better, this deal costs $1,000. Groupon isn't paying you for naming rights, you are paying it for the name Clembough. Let's savor that for a moment. It doesn't really roll off the tongue. It could be pronounced Clem-baw or Clem-bow. Maybe it's a combination of Clem Burke (drummer for Blondie) and "bough," the word for a tree limb.… Read more

The Weather Channel gets it right on iOS

The Weather Channel is a free weather-monitoring application that provides many more features than Apple's built-in Weather app. Released first in 2008, the app recently received a complete overhaul to the interface, adding features that make it even easier to check weather conditions wherever you are.

You can find paid weather applications that are more specialized, but The Weather Channel (sponsored by the cable channel of the same name) offers the features most people want in a weather app. You can view forecasts (hourly, 36-hour, and 10-day outlooks), quick access to Weather Channel local and regional video forecasts, severe … Read more

Groupon the sitcom... what?

Hold the canned laughter, it's true -- Groupon is the focus of a new sitcom.

CBS has just ordered the sitcom for next season, and it's about two friends who moved to Los Angeles to work at Groupon, according to Vanity Fair. (Disclosure: CBS owns CNET.)

"Friend Me" is the name of the TV show, which is sure to kick up some controversy with social-networking giant Facebook. Just a couple of months ago Facebook revised its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities saying that account holders cannot use the word "Book" because it will be … Read more

Groupon Now hits 1.5 million deals, outpacing original Groupon

The original Groupon platform might have set the stage, but Groupon Now has gotten off to an even better start.

Groupon today announced that Groupon Now needed just one year to sell 1.5 million deals. The original Groupon platform needed 15 months to hit that milestone. The 1.5 millionth purchase was made at CiCi Nails in Chicago, where a person bought a $42 manicure and pedicure for $30.

Groupon Now is designed as a real-time, location-based offers service for those who want to immediately redeem a coupon. Merchants can customize the instant deal through a dashboard and manage … Read more

ScoreBig on tickets to sporting events and shows

Do you like to go to sporting events and shows? Most people like to get out to the ballpark or a concert every once in a while, but often rising ticket prices, service fees, and extra hassle keep people from buying tickets.

ScoreBig Daily (Free) is an app for iPhone that works with the ScoreBig.com Web site to get you good seats for events for much less than the original ticket price. As of today's launch of the app, ScoreBig only works with events in L.A. or San Francisco, but it will soon be available for most … Read more

Comedy Central brings The Daily Show Headlines to Android

For the first time, the Daily Show Headlines app comes to Android, bringing content from Comedy Central's award-winning satirical news program to a swath of additional mobile users.

This means that Android users can now get mobile access to videos of Jon Stewart and "The Best F#@king News Team Ever," up to two weeks after original episodes air. In addition to the clip archive, the app offers a quote generator, guest news, and scheduled alerts to help keep you from missing an episode. Plus, it promises viewers exclusive content, which should be a treat for the … Read more

Seven years of Buzz Report: A retrospective

This week, my Web video series, the Buzz Report, is officially over. I don't know of a longer-running Web video series: it started on May 23, 2005, and lasted until this week, April 12, 2012. That's a pretty serious run. And although I know many of you are really upset about its passing (yes, I'm reading the feedback), I want you to know...I loved every minute of it.

Sarah Harbin, Buzz's producer and editor since 2007, and I tried to come up with some of the best moments of the past seven years and compile … Read more

Travelzoo's would-be buyers include Google, Amazon

Travelzoo might just be putting itself on the market. This 14-year-old Internet company, which helps travelers find deals on flights, hotels, and vacation packages, has seen a dismal past few months and therefore could be getting ready to sell itself, according to Reuters.

Prospective buyers include Google, Amazon, and online travel Web sites, according to Reuters. These tech companies might want to get their hands on Travelzoo because of its 24 million subscriber-base, its share in the daily deal world, and its advertising-generated revenue stream.

Currently the New York-based company has a market value of $336.1 million and once … Read more

New shareholder lawsuit targets Groupon execs

Groupon has been hit with another lawsuit from a shareholder upset with the daily-deals company's recent bookkeeping flubs.

The latest complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division, is a derivative lawsuit that accuses the daily-deals site's directors of management failure. Theresa Monturano's 31-page filing (see below) claims the company's management failed its responsibilities when it announced late last month that an accounting error would force it to revise its first set of financial results as a public company. (A derivatives lawsuit is filed when a shareholder seeks … Read more

Groupon may face SEC probe over earnings revision

Groupon's revision of its first set of financial results as a public company has apparently attracted the attention of federal regulators.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is examining last week's announcement but hasn't decided whether to launch a formal investigation, an unnamed source familiar with the situation told The Wall Street Journal.

Groupon representatives declined to comment on the report.

The daily deals site said in a regulatory filing Friday that it had discovered "material weakness" in internal controls over its financial statement and that its fourth-quarter results were worse than previously stated … Read more