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The Pawn Stars for Aspiring Inventors. There's a reality show for just about everyone, from clothing designers to tattoo artists to pawn shop owners. Now there's one for armchair inventors. The Sundance Channel just announced a new documentary TV series about the business of DIY innovation. Quirky features 24-year old Ben Kaufman, founder and CEO of Quirky.com, a product design and manufacturing company that relies entirely on an online community to bring an idea from inception to market. For the series, Kaufman and his team will select the product ideas from two aspiring James Dysons per episode, revealing how concepts go from creative spark to top-selling product. The series will air for six weeks beginning August 30. --NM
Updated 6:33 p.m. EST
Amazon Ups Ante Against Netflix. Amazon's doing a deal with NBC that is really aimed at one thing--building a better net video streaming service to rival Netflix. Amazon's secured access to part of NBCUniversal's film archive, for titles like Elizabeth and Babe, and will be streaming NBC's films through its $79-a-year Amazon Prime system. --KE
Updated 8:35 a.m. EST
Twitter Flagging NSFW Statuses. Twitter, conscious of its role as a one-to-many broadcaster of news and Net content, is adding a little tweak to its code that'll eventually let users (including the Tweep who added the status update) flag content as "Possibly Sensitive." It's a sign that users may be able to be a little more granular about the news updates they choose to receive from Twitter's stream of updates, which may be particularly important in an office environment that doesn't welcome NSFW items. --KE
Spotify Shaking Up U.K. ISP Business. In a sign of how disruptive music streaming service Spotify is, and how much the way it works is influencing the music industry and the business of supplying Net service to customers, Virgin in the U.K. has revealed it will bundle Spotify with its broadband subscriptions for "significantly less" than the £9.99 Spotify currently charges for its monthly Premium subscription. Essentially, Virgin is using the new content company, which relies on an ISP to work, to sell itself as an ISP: Could be a big influencer on the industry. --KE
Apple's The Biggest Smartphone Vendor, And Has A Huge Pile Of Cash. Two big new surveys show Apple has passed Nokia to become the world's number one smartphone vendor, holding off Samsung, and it's actually closing in on LG's seat as the third largest mobile phone vendor of any type. Meanwhile its accumulated cash pile, driven largely by iPhone sales, has risen to be larger than the U.S. government's balance. Charting how Apple turned its business around from a near-total collapse to its current megastar status needs a new type of business math. --KE
--Updated 6:25 a.m. EST
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