Facebook's ‘Phone’ Is Another Triumph of Mediocrity  —  Maybe you were hoping for something radically new and different from a Facebook phone.  If so, Zuck just broke your heart.  But so what.  Facebook never does anything new.  New doesn't matter in the blue.

Streaming Sites and the Rise of Shared Accounts  —  LAST Sunday afternoon, some friends and I were hanging out in a local bar, talking about what we'd be doing that evening.  It turned out that we all had the same plan: to watch the season premiere of “Game of Thrones.”

Response  —  There have been some extremely serious and criminal allegations against me over the last week.  All of the allegations are completely untrue, and I've hired a law firm to represent me in the legal actions against the offending parties.  —  I know this isn't, for now, much information.

How a banner ad for H&R Block appeared on apple.com—without Apple's OK  —  The ghost of Steve Jobs will not be pleased to see this.  —  Zack Henkel  —  Robert Silvie returned to his parents' home for a Mardi Gras visit this year and immediately noticed something strange …

iPhone naming: when simple gets complicated  —  When Apple introduced the iPad 3 as “the new iPad” — dropping its number altogether — it gave Apple watchers something new to ponder.  —  Would the coming iPhone 5 simply be “the new iPhone”?  Would Apple's naming convention finally be applied equally across all product lines?

Silicon Valley's Mouthwatering Tax Break  —  Debate Emerges Over Whether Daily Fringe-Benefit Meals Are Taxable; Issue Is Now on IRS's Radar  —  Google has more than 120 corporate cafes world-wide serving over 50,000 meals a day.  Above, a cafeteria at Google's Venice Beach campus.

Engineering Serendipity  —  WHEN Yahoo banned its employees from working from home in February, the reasons it gave had less to do with productivity than serendipity.  “Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings,” explained the accompanying memo.

Allen Stern, blogging pioneer and entrepreneur, passes away — we will miss you Allen  —  Allen Stern, an early blogger as well as an entrepreneur and an all-around great human being, passed away last week, according to an update posted on his Facebook page by his sister Sari Rosenberger.

Sony announces $699 FMP-X1 4K media player for summer release, 4K downloads slip to fall  —  Along with announcing pricing and a release date for its new 4K LED televisions, Sony has announced more details about its previously-unnamed 4K FMP-X1 media player at NAB 2013.

Sponsors Now Pay for Online Articles, Not Just Ads  —  Articles in a series on Mashable.com called “What's Inside” looked for all the world like the hundreds of other articles on the digital media site.  But journalistically, they were something very different.