Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing files for bankruptcy.

Chipotle faces federal probe.

Facebook deals with aftermath of less-than-stellar IPO showing, as NASDAQ admits some fault and site faces pressure to perform for advertisers. Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, surprises with post-IPO wedding to his longtime girlfriend.

Alibaba and Yahoo strike a $7 bullion stock deal.

AT&T sings praises of Facebook fans.

Apple and Samsung talk today about ending smartphone-patent war.

Barclays to sell $6.1 billion BlackRock stake.

BMW Guggenheim Lab prepares Berlin debut.

Carl's Jr. seeks $100-million IPO.Continue reading...

Apple's next iPhone will have a bigger screen, sources tell Reuters.

JPMorgan faces FBI probe as shareholders sue the company and CEO Jamie Dimon over $2B loss.

Time Warner Cable and Viacom settle iPad dispute.

Air Pacific returns to Fiji Airways branding.

Ben Silverman's Electus details programming for YouTube's new food-centric Hungry channel.

Chevron benefits from Japan's shift away from nuclear.

Comcast launches Skype in select U.S. markets.Continue reading...

Are you ready for some football? Tonight the NFL draft begins, on ESPN, seasonally ushering in the source of America's most popular TV programming — and one of its biggest branding vehicles —back into the cultural discourse.

As we noted earlier, Nike is running with its "Fast is Faster" campaign touting its new NFL uniforms during the 2012 draft. PepsiCo's Quaker Oats brand also kicked off its new status as the "Official Hot Cereal Sponsor" of the NFL yesterday with a Play 60 Youth Football Festival that starred Andrew Luck, the fortuitously-named Stanford University quarterback who is the presumptive No. 1 choice in tonight's draft. 

And Google, not missing a chance to promote its social networking platform, is inviting fans to join the top two draft picks (Luck and Robert Griffin III) virtually via Google+ hangouts. Continue reading...

Google+ is getting a facelift, and as seen in the above video, it promises every user the "World in Front of Me" (from the album Stairwells, Kina Grannis.) According to Google, the redesign will make the social network "more functional and flexible."

Common sense says the apps are coming.

Cosmetics aside, changes include: a new navigation interface with a customizable "ribbon" of applications (left side), replacing statice top-of-page icons, that enables dragging of apps to a customized order, and the ability to hover over apps for quick actions, as illustrated here.

"We've also built the ribbon with the future in mind, giving us an obvious (and clutter-free) space for The Next Big Feature, and The Feature After That. So stay tuned,” writes Google's Vic Gundotra. 

A public signal that Google+ is planning to open its platform to third-party apps? Continue reading...

American Express has tapped comedian and uber-tweeter Aziz Ansari for brand's first Twitter Sync TV campaign, which breaks tonight. Check out the :15 version of the commercial below, along with other headlines this hour.Continue reading...

Adobe gets more social.

Amazon wrings profit from fulfillment.

AmLactin taps Olympic swimmer Dara Torres as brand ambassador.

Angry Birds to launch retail partnership

Apple iPad users find high video use can crunch data plans as Consumer Reports finds that the new version runs hotter than the old one.

Arby's readies brand relaunch.

Boeing gains 787 Dreamliner clearance by U.S. regulators.Continue reading...

When Matt Cutts speaks, people listen. So when Google’s software engineer and webspam guru recently posted (on his Google+ page, of course) that ICANN's looming dotbrands — the generic (vanity, customized, branded) top level domains or TLDs that are fast approaching — won't boost search engine results, the SEO and domain name worlds sat upright.

Cutts was responding to ARI Registry Services CEO Adrian Kinderis, who penned an op-ed column that argued: “Will a new TLD web address automatically be favoured by Google over a .com equivalent? Quite simply, yes it will,” wrote Kinderis, basing his argument on Google’s ranking algorithms that search for domain name keywords thus enabling business and brands to create commanding "clean name spaces."Continue reading...

Google+ may inspire such fits of creativity as the chocolate Google+ page that Cadbury UK created (above) to thank its 500,000 G+ followers, but it isn't inspiring all Googlers, past or present.

While disgruntled Goldman Sachs exec Greg Smith became a media sensation after he published his resignation letter in the New York Times this week, a former Googler named James Whittaker, who quit in February to return to Microsoft (from whence he came), blasted Google for letting Google+ take over its business focus (and sanity, he argues).

In a personal blog post entitled "Why I left Google," Whittaker wrote that “The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus" — for which he blames the company's obsession with Google+.Continue reading...