A new Kickstarter project called the Ego! Smartmouse blends together some recent trends in computing, including hardware identity authentication and 3D motion control to come up with a unique input device that wears many hats. The Ego! is a mouse in the traditional sense, allowing you to control your desktop or laptop computer, and it also has on-board file storage, can work as an authentication device for various services, and features built-in acceleration and motion detection to work like a Wiimote for controlling games.

The Smartmouse packs its own Linux-based OS into its compact design, with a 400 MHz ARM9 processor and up to 8GB of onboard flash storage. It connects via Bluetooth, has a gyroscope, compass and optical mouse sensor in addition to its accelerometer, and also includes a built-in VGA camera, touch-sensitive surface, vibration motor and notification LEDs. It charges via micro USB, and the project creators say it’ll get a decent amount of battery life thanks to the use of low-power tech.

Created by UK-based design firm Laura Sapiens, the Ego! Smartmouse is the product of a team with strong engineering and interaction design backgrounds. CEO Matteo Modè comes from an industrial and automotive engineering background, and the founding team also includes expertise in embedded security, consumer electronics, computer vision and embedded systems.

Well this is interesting: New York-based cable company Cablevision is suing cross-town content partner Viacom. The lawsuit is over Viacom’s requirement for Cablevision to carry a bunch of channels its users don’t watch, in order to have access to a bunch of channels they do.

The idea behind the lawsuit is basically that Viacom has eight core channels that Cablevision wishes to carry, but Viacom bundles in a bunch of channels that viewers don’t watch and its customers don’t care about. Even though those ancillary networks don’t actually have any viewership, Cablevision has to pay for them anyway. And that, in effect, drives up the cost of cable TV for everyone.

According to the press release — a redacted version of the lawsuit itself won’t be available until later — Cablevision is accusing Viacom of violating antitrust laws, by “illegally” forcing Cablevision to carry and pay for 14 low-rated ancillary networks. Those include channels that you’ve never heard of, like Centric, Logo, and Palladia, as well as some ham-handed add-ons attached to popular brands, like MTV Hits, MTV Tr3s (WTF?!?!), Nick Jr., Nicktoons, VH1 Classic, and VH1 Soul.

Due to its massive reach and ability to attract viewers on a wide range of devices, YouTube has become the de facto place for many new media companies to distribute their video content. But analytics is one place where YouTube is lacking. Making sense of all the data behind where viewers came from and why, and how they can get more of them.

San Francisco-based startup VidIQ hopes to provide that layer of analytics, as a way to help those who distribute their content on YouTube — be they brands, marketers, or independent producers — to reach more viewers. Through a mix of YouTube SEO, smart scheduling, and listening tools, VidIQ promises new ways for producers to optimize their distribution strategies.

VidIQ was founded by Rob Sandie and Todd Troxell, two of the folks behind video distribution platform Viddler. In 2011, the two moved out to the Bay Area from Bethlehem, Penn., and have been busy building their new company ever since. Early on, they were focused on the distribution problem, particularly on getting video on an increasingly fragmented number of devices.

500 Startups announced recently that it would be using AngelList exclusively for startup applications to the incubator. AngelList is a service that matches early-stage startups with investors. Now Rock Health, the accelerator for health tech startups, is making a similar move, taking applications exclusively (here) through AngelList for its fifth class.

Rock Health founder Halle Tecco explains that the accelerator was already making startups create profiles on AngelList but the network has grown into a platform for startups to manage several pieces of business, and it made sense to make the switch over. She adds that it just makes the application experience a seamless process. In Rock Health’s last class, the accelerator received 1,500 applications.

For background, Rock Health startups have raised over $43 million in funding to date, averaging $900,000 per startup, not including Rock Health’s investment from limited partners Aberdare Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the Mayo Clinic, and Mohr Davidow Ventures. Other Rock Health partners include Accel Partners, Fenwick & West, GE, Genentech, Harvard Medical School, Kaiser Permanente, Montreux Equity Partners, NEA, Qualcomm Life, Quest Diagnostics, Silicon Valley Bank, UnitedHealth Group, and UCSF.

Senzari, the Miami-based Pandora competitor backed by $3 million in funding from 500 Startups and other angels, is making good on its recent acquisition of  the Berlin-based streaming music app Wahwah.fm. The company is now spinning off its music efforts as a mobile-first streaming radio application, rebranded as just Wahwah. In the meantime, the Senzari web-based streaming service is being temporarily shut down, as the product is rebuilt.

According to Senzari COO Demian Bellumio, the company realized that its “AMP3” recommendation engine technology now has the potential to grow beyond just music. Because of that, the team has decided to rebrand its music product Wahwah, while Senzari itself will remain the brand behind its future efforts in other areas. “Senzari will stay as more of a big data company,” Bellumio explains. “It gives us the flexibility to start creating other products that will cater to other verticals,” he says.  The company is already testing its recommendation engine on movies internally, for instance, but has yet to decide how what the final product will be, or whether it will be a B2B or B2C effort.

In the meantime, the focus at present is on the new mobile-only Wahwah application, arriving first on iPhone, followed by iPad, Android, web and even Firefox OS. Although the Senzari website is going away for now, it will relaunch in 2 or 3 months,  after the company has a chance to learn more about user behavior on mobile.

Keith Rabois is going to be a full-time investor after more than a decade in operating roles. And fittingly, he’ll be doing that as a partner at Khosla Ventures — a high-powered firm as feisty, contrarian, and entrepreneur-focused as he is.

Rather than being put off, Silicon Valley had jumped at the chance to hire him after he left his COO role at Square over an employee’s sexual harassment claim in January. Sources say that, while he was weighing offers from Khosla and a new executive role at Airbnb in recent days, he also fielded serious inquiries from a large handful of other venture firms and tech companies.

Firm founder Vinod Khosla has had one of the better views of the situation.

Google just announced a major update to its Google+ platform that aims to replace today’s ubiquitous Google sign-ins on third-party sites with Google+ logins. The new Google+ account-based logins, Google argues, offer far more features than the current Google authentication system, though the older version will continue to be available and function.

The new sign-in features will allow users to sign in to web and mobile apps with their Google accounts and bring their Google+ profile info with them so they don’t have to create a new username and password when they sign in to a third-party application (the parallels to Facebook Connect are pretty obvious here).

The new system will continue to offer features like two-factor authentication and also use OAuth 2.0, but in addition, it will allow developers to add a number of new features, including the ability to let users install their mobile apps for Android with just once click and to allow users to share information like their Fitbit data directly to their Google+ profile pages or to selectively share content from services like Shazam directly to their Google+ streams.