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CBS CEO Les Moonves is known to occasionally drop pieces of information that he’s not supposed to on his company’s earnings calls, and this quarter was no exception. When asked about CBS’s appetite for striking deals with new streaming providers that might not have the money to pay cash up front to license its content, Moonves said that CBS had decided against joining an Apple TV service because it was based on an ad split. Apple is rumored to be working on a subscription streaming service that would have content from many TV networks and would go up against the typical cable and satellite services. From what has been reported the CBS philosophy of getting paid for upfront licensing fees for syndication of its content online, as opposed to partnering on revenue-sharing agreements. This is also why CBS didn’t join Hulu. Although it looks like that move is paying off as they struck a deal with Netflix and Amazon earlier this year and the CW also licensed its shows to Netflix and Hulu.

On November 16th B&N is launching their own tablet to go head to head with the Amazon Kindle Fire. It is going to sell for $249 and here are the details on this Nook. What we’re looking at is a 7-inch VividView IPS color touchpanel with a 1024 x 600 screen resolution (that’s 169 pixels per inch), a 1.2GHz dual-core OMAP4 processor, 1GB of RAM, dimensions of 8.1- x 5- x 0.48-inches, 16GB of inbuilt storage, a microSD expansion slot, roughly eight hours of battery life with WiFi switched off (that sinks to four hours with videos playing back), 802.11b/g/n WiFi and support for a smorgasbord of file formats including ePUB, PDF, XLS, DOC, PPT, TXT, DOCM, Flash, JPG, MP3, MP4 and AAC.

B&N says that it offers “everything the Nook Color [does] + the best in HD entertainment.” So, why does B&N think you’ll pony up the extra? For one, the Nook Tablet has twice the RAM and twice the storage compared to its closest rival, while also being lighter and having access to over two million books, magazines and newspapers. So, what say you? You’ll be able to pre-order your own on November 7th, and for those still dubious, in-store demonstrations will begin on the 15th.

It has been reported that Groupon is selling just about $700 million worth of stock in its IPO, this makes the famous daily deals company the biggest IPO tech of its kind since Google hit the stock market. To give you an idea of how big this actually is in 2004 Google’s IPO ended up raising $1.67 billion dollars. After 7 years of Google’s IPO they have become one of the biggest companies in this country and is valued at nearly $200 billion. Now the question is will Groupon be the next Google? I found this data from Capital IQ of the top 10 list of US Internet software and services IPO’s.

1) Google/Aug. 2004 — raised $1.67 billion
2) Groupon/Nov. 2011 — $700 million
3) LinkedIn/May 2011 — $352.8 million
4) Bankrate/June 2011 — $300 million
5) Spark Networks/Feb. 2006 — $258.8 million
6) Limelight Networks/June 2007 — $240 million
7) Equinix/Aug. 2000 — $240 million
Akamai Technologies/Oct. 1999 — $234 million
9) Dice Holdings, July 2007, $217.1 million
10) Internap Network Services, September 1999, $190 million

If you have a Kindle or a Kindle fire you will be able to have books lent to you from Amazon. You also need to be a subscriber to the Amazon Prime program as well. From what I have read the program will be limited in the beginning , about 5,000 titles but more than 100 current and former national best sellers. So far none of the big six largest publishers that are in the US are participating, also Amazon will be limiting borrowers to one title at a time but you can keep that title as long as you would like too. Once you get a new book the old book will be deleted from your library, seems pretty cut and dry to me on how the lending will work. The program has been named Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, and cannot be accessed via apps on some other devices, which means it won’t work on Apple’s iPad and iPhone even though you can read Kindle books on those devices.

A few days ago I wrote a blog on the rumors of a new app from Apple that will let you actually use your iPhone to purchase certain items from the Apple Store right there without needing any help from an employee. It will also let you order products online with a retail store pick up option and many of these stores will have that feature go live Thursday. Here is a few pieces of information on how this will work.

• If a customer orders an in-stock product, pick up will be available approximately 12 minutes after completing the order. Why 12 minutes? Well, the order goes through the system to the designated Apple Store in about 3 minutes. Apple’s back-of-house employees have 2 minutes to set all of the products aside on a shelf from the minute it was ordered. There is then a 7-minute grace period for employees to get everything else in order. Around 12 minutes after purchasing, customers will be able to walk into the Apple Store, skip lines, skip registers, get their products, sign for them and leave. We’re told Apple is really excited about this, and it’s something customers have been seeking for a while.
• If a customer orders something that a retail store does not have in-stock, like a custom-configured machine, an accessory the store does not carry, or something like an engraved or gift-wrapped device, the customer will be a given a pick-up date right after the purchase is completed. Everything will have free shipping when sent to an Apple retail store. Once the order arrives at the Apple Store and is available for pickup, a push notification will be sent to the customer through the Apple Store app, letting him or her know the order is ready. We’re told the same 12-minute timeframe applies here as well: 12 minutes from the time the push notification is received, the customer’s order should be waiting to be signed for.
• We have been told customers who opt to purchase online or through the app will be given priority when they walk into the store over a customer waiting for a retail specialist, and that Apple expects the majority of customers over the next few years to use the in-store pick up option as their default method of buying products. This will help with foot traffic in retail stores while also reducing the cost of shipping for Apple, and possibly even reducing the number of stores Apple needs to open to accommodate sales.
• Apple will offer customers the ability to return items purchased online to retail stores.
• Lastly, we’re told that Apple will be attributing revenue from items purchased in this manner to the retail store where the items are delivered and retrieved. This should help create new job opportunities since hiring at Apple Stores is based on sales. Apple is reportedly expecting a 30% increase in sales at retail stores from this program, and it will only be available in the U.S. for now.

One thing that has not been part of the iPhone apps has been a native gmail app. Well never fear it looks like it is finally here. Sources I have read are saying the app is in its final stages and has already been submitted to Apple for review. From all the sources it is said that yes the app will be approved by Apple and we could be seeing this gmail app shortly. The native Gmail app will likely bring other key functionality as well: like Priority Inbox and one-click starring of messages. Other possibilities include some of the stuff Google is about to roll out for Gmail proper: like contact icons, better threading, and deep searching functionality. Maybe there will even be some Google+ integration, which Google is also hard at work on for Gmail.

Google doesn’t have the greatest track record with their iOS apps (they’re often full of bugs and fairly ugly to boot). But again, all indications are that this is a good one. And I believe it’s the first one built after Google’s new commitment to design as a core feature across all of their products.