iGaming Business – The BetCoin Bitcoin Entertainment Network has announced the launch of BetCoin Reels, a new animated slot machine that allows players to gamble with the Bitcoin virtual currency. BetCoin said the new HTML5 online slot machine web app features a design that can be accessed from any mobile platform and gives players the chance to win up to 1000 times their original bet. BetCoin Reels will also become the first BetCoin game to accept Litecoin credits, an alt-coin currency. James Mason, BetCoin’s chief operating officer’s assistant, added that the firm is currently updating its entire gaming platform with…

The Street – What a year! Going into 2013, no one expected the broader market averages to hit all-time highs. With stagnant wage growth, higher taxes and a still-fragile real estate market, how could have anyone have called the 30% returns we received last year? And yet here we are. With such astonishingly high returns, some investors may be looking to diversify their portfolios for the new year. Occasionally investor portfolios can become unevenly weighted when one position moves drastically to the upside. In this article I want to highlight three exchange traded funds to consider in the first quarter….

Fox News – Turning 103 is a rare milestone that one would think you’d want to celebrate in the company of  family and friends, not gambling and getting a tattoo. But that’s exactly what Seattle grandmother Hilda Evelyn Kottman did for her recent birthday. The adorable granny and her grandson marked her birthday by going to a casino, having an all-you-can-eat crab dinner and getting some ink. The Daily Dot reports this in not the only out-of-character acts for the grandmother. According to the website, Kottman, who lived through both World Wars, the moon landing and Sept. 11, reportedly stole…

New York Times – Renowned for its universities and a celebrated Renaissance monastery, this Lombardy town about 25 miles south of Milan has in recent years earned another, more dubious, distinction: the gambling capital of Italy. Slot machines and video lottery terminals, known as V.L.T.s, can be found all over in coffee bars and tobacco shops, gas stations, mom-and-pop shops and shopping malls, not to mention 13 dedicated gambling halls. By some counts, there is one slot machine or V.L.T. for every 104 of the city’s 68,300 residents. Critics blame the concentration of the machines for an increase in chronic…

iGaming Business – Information and advisory services provider the NPD Group has recorded a 25.4% rise in the sale of computing devices in the US in the 12 months up to November 2013. Using its Distributor Track and Commercial Reseller Tracking Service, the company reported that a total of 14.4 million desktops, notebooks and tablets had been sold through US commercial channels in the period. The increase of 25.4% far eclipses the 3.1% rise recorded in the previous year. Tablets experienced the most significant growth during the last year with sales having increased 49%, while sales for notebooks and desktop…

Online-Casinos.com – The end of the year 2013 approaches quickly and the year 2014 looks like it will usher in new technology and trends that have never been seen before. First the advent of mobile and smart phones will change the world of online gambling by making it more accessible and faster. Mobile is definitely the big thing and as flash based technology is taken over by the new HTML5 platform the games on mobile will be more exciting and varied. Next for 2014 we will see the continued effort in the USA to provide an online gambling industry regulated…

The year 2013 was a volatile one for Zynga social gaming as the company went through a significant strategic and management transition and terminated some of its well known games. Revenues and profits continued to slide as the user base shrank. The only silver lining was that the company’s key franchises Farmville, Farmville 2 and Zynga Poker continued to lend support. Going forward, Zynga will primarily focus on mobile gaming and further development of its own gaming platform. Under the new leadership, the company is confident that it can reinvent itself and bounce back by bringing more stability and predictability…

Orlando Sentinel – About the only sure bet when it comes to gambling in Florida is this: Sooner or later, the issue will start an argument. For decades, legislators, activists and kitchen-table kingpins have debated whether more casinos should come to the state. But with gambling growing more popular nationwide, there’s a chance Congress eventually could clear the way for card sharks — and vulnerable minnows — to skip the casinos and wager from their computers. At least three bills to allow Internet betting were introduced in Congress this year, and the issue gained enough traction that House lawmakers held…