The rights to Casa.com (Spanish for ‘house’) have been transferred to Amazon, indicating the ecommerce giant’s next dedicated vertical shop may be a home decor site. Amazon’s Quidsi network of sites already runs diapers.com for baby goods, wag.com for pets, beautybar.com for — well, you get it. If you visit Casa.com now you’ll find more evidence, with a blank screen explaining “You have reached an invalid location. Maybe you are looking for http://www.diapers.com, http://www.soap.com…” Casa.com could offer a more affordable, traditional home decor shopping alternative to luxury and flash sales sites like One Kings Lane and Gilt’s Decorati.

Domain Name Wire first reported on the domain switch, noting that casa.com was protected by whois privacy for years prior to the transfer. Also, I found that Quidsi employee Morgan C. lists herself on LinkedIn as a “Merchandising Associate at Quidsi Inc., Casa.com”, and Domain Name Wire spotted another Quidsi employee with the same title. You won’t find that logo above anywhere else though, it’s just a mockup I concocted.

Amazon bought Diapers.com parent Quidsi for $545 million in November 2010. When Quidsi launched Yoyo.com for toys in September 2011, it’s CEO Marc Lore told TechCrunch that the company’s next vertical site was going to continue its focus its core demographic of moms. Casa.com fits that bill perfectly.

The new one-stop shop could include standard Quidsi features such as a combined shopping cart with other Quidsi sites, free 2-day shipping for purchases over $50, seasonal product selections, and featured picks by the site’s team. Considering One Kings Lane was expected to do $100 million in 2011 sales, the home decor market could be a huge opportunity for Amazon.

Books are not the best way to learn. To retain knowledge you have to interact with it, and that’s where BenchPrep comes in. The startup licenses textbooks from big publishers like McGraw Hill and converts them into interactive web and mobile learning courses. Today, BenchPrep announces its expansion beyond college admission test prep. It will now offer courses to assist with high school, university, law, medicine, professional certifications, army, and more. It’s also releasing a new evaluation tool that determines a student’s weaknesses in a given subject. BenchPrep is the future of the ‘education anywhere’ movement.

The diagnostic tool and additional courses should help the 7-month old BenchPrep build on its existing base of 200,000 users, 7,000 of which are paying customers. Originally known as Watermelon Express, the company is backed by over a million dollars in funding from Lightbank. In May 2011, it rebranded as BenchPrep and pivoted from the standalone educational mobile app space crowded by companies like Inkling to developing multi-platform educational courses. The Chicago-based company now has 22 employees.

BenchPrep users can choose from over 30 courses such as AP US History, SAT Math, California Bar Exam, and Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist — though it leaves computer programming education to Codecademy. The diagnostic tool indicates where they need more practice. Each course offers reading materials, bookmarks and notes, flashcards, real-time chat and study groups, quizzes, and performance analytics. BenchPrep apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android let customers access their courses on the go.

I was surprised that big education publishers like McGraw Hill and Princeton Review would be willing to license their materials. But BenchPrep’s CEO and co-founder Ashish Rangnekar convinced them “We’re not competing for the same dollar. Licensing to BenchPrep creates an incremental revenue channel that does not cannibalize their book products.”

In about 7 days, BenchPrep can convert any textbook, say one on Calculus that sells for $50, into an interactive course it can sell for $100. That’s still much cheaper than taking a class in person. The publisher gets paid royalties on each course sale, and Rangnekar says BenchPrep plans to be cash-flow positive by June. New partnerships with more publishers will add 50 more courses to its library in the coming months.

Eventually, publishers might get a clue that interactive digital education is going to destroy their paper book business. If they’re smart they’ll start developing their own courses or raise licensing fees. Until then though, BenchPrep will be the savior of anyone frustrated by the static book-learning experience.

For a look at how the web and mobile apps work, check out this BenchPrep intro video:

To combat the lack of transparency around customer satisfaction with daily deals, Groupon today launched a new version of its Merchant Center. It includes the real-time percentage of deal customers who would recommend the business to a friend, plus their comments. Customer satisfaction is a big question for merchants wondering if they should start or continue running daily deals. Data on satisfaction rates is scarce, though. Worse,  a 2010 study showed that just 36% of customers spend more than the value of a deal, and just 20% return to the business. The feature could be a double-edged sword, encouraging retention or desertion depending on a merchant’s feedback.

The new Merchant Center is now available to all Groupon merchants. It also includes the deal statistics feature launched last month which shows aggregate buyer demographics including zip code, gender, and age.

The customer feedback system may not be totally accurate, though. To calculate the satisfaction rates, Groupon surveys users immediately after they redeem a deal. So far, only 1 million customers have left feedback, so merchants won’t always have a representative sample. The comments may also be highly polarized, with only those who truly love or hate a deal taking the time to respond in words.

Considering chronic gripes about fine print deal term, and employee dissatisfaction than can influence the customer experience, the new feedback stats are a gamble for Groupon. Previously, merchants may have assumed customers were happy since they were getting a big discount. Positive review may also have less influence on a merchant’s decision to stick with Groupon than whether it’s actually helping their business. Meanwhile, a poor recommendation rating or an especially pissed off commenter could lead them to ditch the daily deals service.