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Best Buy is on a mission to change its image and reclaim sales lost to rivals including Wal-Mart and Amazon. Under CEO Brian Dunn, the consumer-electronics chain is testing less-cluttered layouts similar to those of Apple stores, training employees to demonstrate to customers how gadgets work together and moving away from promotions to everyday low pricing. 

Continuing its ballsy Kenny Powers campaign that started with a Funny or Die video last year, K-Swiss has now promoted Kenny to CEO of the company. And the fictional star of HBO's Eastbound & Down is filling out his management team with a group of real athletes

A LOONG read, but fascinating. Not necessarily for trends, but in general.

"Sam Glassenberg, CEO of Funtactix, which develops social games for major motion pictures like The Hunger Games, said the in-game ad market presents both huge opportunities and new risks for brands and agencies. He cited statistics from NPD and said that there are almost 200 million online gamers out there who play games for an average of 13 hours a week. Yet, the majority of ad spend still goes to TV or banner ads and only a fraction to games, he noted. "How are we going to close that gap?" he asked. The discussion was organized by SponsorPay, a Berlin-based engagement advertising company whose application rewards users that watch an ad with virtual currency and other goodies. SponsorPay is one of a handful of companies out there including SocialVibe, Flurry and WildTangent seeking to help games developers monetize their product and brand advertisers engage consumers with such ads. Games entrepreneur Wilson Kriegel, formerly with Zynga, addressed this potential by discussing his involvement with mega-hit Draw Something, an online drawing game developed at his former company OMGPop, which Zynga acquired in March. The game allows people to draw things and share them with their friends. Since its launch early in 2012, it has seen over 90 million installs, 10 billion drawings created and was a top trending topic on Twitter.  Companies including McDonald's, Disney and Sprint have incorporated their ads into the game. Kriegel said that ad features including in-game banners, game features and in-game call to actions seen a clickthrough rate of 1 percent to 10 percent-unheard of in an industry where average CTRs are 0.7 percent."

"OrderGroove, a startup that allows brands to create subscription and membership commerce, has raised $7 million from Fung Capital USA, with additional investment from Lerer Ventures, Legend and SWaN Ventures, Allegro Venture Partners, Bee Partners, as well as former Walmart.com CEO Raul Vazquez and NEW Corporation's Chairman Fred Schaufeld. Brands turn to OrderGroove to add subscription commerce models to their e-commerce sites. For example, L'Oreal uses OrderGroove's SaaS to offer a monthly box of skincare products."

"Found at CNN.com/Trends, the section is a frequently updated countdown of the most popular stories on the web. A large CNN article anchors each spot, while a bar to the right and a drop-down "see more" option augment that with related news and analysis from other sources. "What we realized as we went about building this is that when a big story comes out, you don't just read a single source anymore," Zite CEO Mark Johnson told Mashable during a demo of the new section. "We want to facilitate that process in the product itself, so we thought why not use some of Zite's technology to do that?""

""The ultimate computer for me is a mixed reality world, where your field of view becomes an infinite display, where you see virtual objects and holograms," Nadella said."

This morning at Hulu's Upfront presentations in New York, the streaming service announced it has grown its subscriber base 30 percent year-over-year, and will reach 12 million subscribers in the U.S. this month. For comparison's sake, last year it had grown to 9 million subscribers after seeing a 50 percent increase over the year prior. Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins also said that hours per viewer was up 30 percent, and total streams were up 78 percent.

"Basically, Iris Automation brings situational awareness to drones, and acts as the machine eyes on board any given UAV. "It's a visual world, so drones need sight," the CEO said."

After Apple CEO Tim Cook hinted Monday morning about a "record weekend" for sales of the new iPad, Apple this afternoon is confirming just how good of a weekend it was. Since the first iPads went on sale Friday morning, 3 million tablets have been sold, according to Apple.

"Nanigans co-founder and CEO Ric Calvillo said the CTR for Sponsored Results in some instances exceeded 3%. MarketPlace ads typically have miniscule click rates. Nanigans also looked specifically at the effectiveness of the new format when it came to app installs, since it promises to be a popular way for developers to promote apps on Facebook. In that vein, Sponsored Results had 14 times higher installs than MarketPlace ads."

Soundrop uses the Spotify app platform to create a group listening environment for Spotify users.

Mogreet launched the AdStitch mobile advertising service Tuesday, combining high-quality video ads with mobile messaging to help brands easily recoup return on investments. Cox Media Group's Oakland, Calif. television station, KTVU, has been testing a morning weather alert to subscribers along with an ad in the MMS message on mobile phones. The ad in the message typically ranges from five to 15 seconds, but more advertisers want to create shorter clips. The best-performing ad units are shorter, according to Mogreet CEO James Citron. "An automaker knows showing a five- or a 15-second video of a car performs better than 20 characters in text, banner or display ad," Citron said. He believes MMS is the only way publishers can reach 95% of Americans with mobile video.

Tencent Holdings is China's biggest internet company, with 430 million users.  China's online advertising market expanded more than 40% to $4.2 billion last year, according to Media Partners Asia. The industry may exceed $10 billion by 2015, it said. Tencent CEO Ma Huateng is wooing that money by shifting his focus from personal computers to mobile devices.