I’m a big fan of the “digital home,” even if the phrase itself has slipped from popular use lately. I cannot wait for it to happen to me—I’ll have connected displays (does the word TV even apply anymore?) throughout the house, including the ones in my pocket, in my lap, or otherwise within reach at all times. Those displays will all speak IP, the language of the internet, and they’ll all speak to each other as well, allowing me to control one display—say, my TV—with another one—my Droid X, for example. There’s so much product innovation yet to come in the digital home that I love my job.

I’m not the only one who sees it, of course. If you follow the excited announcements from TV makers and electronics retailers like Best Buy, the next TV we all buy will be a connected TV (defined as a TV set with its own internet connection whether wired or wireless and some kind of software platform), a critical first step toward that future digital home nirvana.

CBS (NYSE: CBS) Studios International and Reliance Broadcast Network Limited (RBNL) Wednesday announced a deal to launch television channels in India through a joint venture company to be called BIG CBS Networks Pvt. Ltd.

BIG CBS will be incorporated in India, and CBS and RBNL will each have a 50% equity interest. The company will initially launch three English language entertainment channels customized for the Indian market in the fourth quarter of 2010. More on B&C]

Mumbai, India-based Mauj Mobile, a mobile content provider that’s part of the People Group, has acquired UK-based Mobango for its international catalog of 35,000 free mobile applications. The acquisition will not only help it expand beyond India, but also into applications from traditional mobile content, like ringtones and wallpapers.

Search engine and portal operator Lycos has been sold to Indian digital marketing firm Ybrant Digital by South Korea’s Daum Communications for $36 million. That’s significantly less than the $95 million Daum paid for Lycos in 2004. The agreement calls for Ybrant to purchase all of Daum’s stock in Lycos in an all-cash deal.

Twenty-four hours after launching its latest handset, suddenly RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) is enduring high-level skepticism that its BlackBerry is suitable for use.

According to two Reuters reports, BlackBerry’s centralized e-mail and messaging services are prompting governments to pick other handsets for official use and to consider a ban…

Mountain View, Calif.-based MobileIron has raised $16 million in a third round of funding to help develop a platform that manages everything from iPads to smartphones in the enterprise.

The round was led by Foundation Capital, reports peHUB. Also participating was its existing investors Storm Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Norwest Venture Partners and Big Basin Ventures.

ZenithOptimedia has revised its ad spend forecast upward for the U.S. and Europe, while the internet is poised to grow 13.1 percent in 2010 and gain another 16.1 percent year-over-year in 2011. In the U.S., mobile ad spending and social media ad spending have had a particularly strong impact on the online space’s growth.

UK mobile content and services company Win Plc announced today that it is recommending to shareholders a cash offer from the Sequoia-backed Indian mobile services firm IMI Mobile. The 141 pence ($2.11) per share offer values WIN at around £15.93 million ($ 23.8 million). This represents a 43 percent premium to the share price on the 29th April, the closing price before discussions were announced.

Not all of Win’s shareholders are happy with the offer. Before today’s announcement, ISIS Equity Partners, Win’s largest shareholder with 19.1 percent of the company, released a statement on 10 June that “encouraged the Win Board not to recommend an offer at this level.” It said, “In our opinion, the potential offer, at 141 pence per Win ordinary share, would substantially undervalue the Company.

Indian ad net Komli Media has acquired Australian online rep firm PostClick. The deal is intended to expand Komli’s reach across the Asia Pacific region, which still has a lot of potential for online ad spending to grow. The combination of Komli and PostClick gives the two companies a reach of over 30 million uniques. Terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed.

It’s the most common question I get in my travels: Will people ever pay for content again? See what I had to say about that in this three-minute clip from a recent interview.

There’s less than 24 hours to register for our meetup happening at MSN’s HQ on Wednesday at 6pm.

Marking our founder Rafat’s move on to pastures new, we have a great quartet of panelists ready to bet on why the future of digital media looks bright…

—David Rowan, editor, Wired UK
—Julie Meyer, CEO, Ariadne Capital; online Dragon’s Den judge
—Peter Bale, executive producer, MSN UK
—Rafat Ali, founder and editor, ContentNext Media

Note: read Rafat’s post about his leaving.

Dear Readers,

Our founder, a digital warrior and friend to many of you, Rafat Ali, is stepping down after eight years building and growing ContentNext. As many of you know, Guardian News & Media acquired ContentNext, and Rafat has decided this is a good time for him to take a break and think about the next chapter. This is the statement the Guardian released today.

Caroline Little
CEO, ContentNext
CEO, Guardian North America

—

Guardian News & Media and ContentNext today announced that ContentNext Founder and Editor Rafat Ali will be leaving the company at the beginning of July. Rafat Ali started paidContent as a blog in 2002, and later added three other sites, paidContent.uk, mocoNews and contentSutra, before the business was purchased by Guardian News & Media in 2008. ContentNext now has some 600,000 unique users and its websites, with their blend of news and analysis, are a must read for senior executives in the media, entertainment, publishing, advertising, mobile, marketing and technology sectors.

Tim Brooks, Managing Director of Guardian News & Media, said: ” As anyone who follows the company and reads our sites knows, Rafat has done an amazing job of building ContentNext from the ground up and we wish him every success in the future.” 

Ernie Sander, who has been the managing editor at ContentNext for the past 18 months, will assume a wider strategic role. Co-editor Staci Kramer, Rafat’s first hire at the company, will continue to be a thought leader on and off the site.

In the end, all things do come to an end. The good and bad part is, it is never a definite marker, but all part of a process. And so it has been for me. After pouring exactly eight years of my life and a lifetime into this, I am leaving ContentNext and paidContent in early July. I will continue to advise the company for the rest of the year.

For most of you who know me, this isn’t coming as a huge surprise. I have been wrestling with this for months now, and the two-year mark under the Guardian and the eight-year mark since I launched the first site, seems appropriate enough as a closure point.

Smartphone handsets fueled the money Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) makes from internet data to £4 billion ( billion) during its 2009/10 fiscal year - nearly a fifth more than in the previous year.

Across that year, group profit rebounded 180 percent to £8.6 billion ( billion), recovering from last year’s £5.9 billion write-off against Turkish and Spanish telcos, on 8.4 percent higher revenue of £44.5 billion.

Now that we’ve gotten all excited about the potential revenues iAd could reap, and big giants like Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) have acquired start-ups for hundreds of millions of dollars, what happens if mobile advertising doesn’t end up taking off this year—or any other year?

That thought must creep into the minds of industry executives, especially when a guy like Kevin Ryan, the former CEO of online-ad company DoubleClick, tells the WSJ that he is skeptical about the potential of mobile advertising.