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Adjusting from print to online was challenging enough. Now here comes Social Media, which are changing your world even faster. Come to BlogOn 2004 at UC Berkeley July 22-3. ------------------ JOBS   Real Rhapsody: Channel Marketing Manager - Music Devices & OEMs   HighBeam: VP Engineering and CTO   MLB.com: Technical Project Manager, NYC   Qpass: Senior Product Marketing Manager - European Focus ------------- The featured jobs are classified ads. Post them here: Classified Section.

 Loudeye Purchases EU Digital Music Service OD2: As expected, Europe's biggest online music provider OD2, founded by Peter Gabriel (Gabriel and OD2 CEO Charles Grimsdale, in the picture on the right, speaking at the Midem Music Festival in Cannes earlier this year, which I attended) is being acquired, but the acquirer is a big surprise: Seattle-based digital media and music tech provider Loudeye, in a deal valued at least $38.6 million, reports WSJ.
Executives from both companies said their deal was prompted in large part by a growing interest from potential partners in introducing music services that aren't limited to the U.S. and Europe. "Virtually every company we talk to wants to deploy a global strategy," says Jeff Cavins, Loudeye's CEO, in this story.
Under the terms of the deal, Loudeye will pay OD2 shareholders $20.7 million, including $18.4 million in stock and $2.3 million in cash. Loudeye agreed to pay an additional $17.9 million in cash or stock over the next 18 months, for a total of $38.6 million in guaranteed payments.
OD2 powers the music sites for MSN in UK, Coke Music, Tiscali, HMV and others. Microsoft, on the other hand, has an already existing tie-up with Loudeye in U.S. It is an incestuous circle of connections...
Related:
-- OD2 Sale Announcement Today?
-- OD2, Microsoft Team Up on Windows Media Jukebox
-- OD2 Launches New Jukebox
-- Loudeye's Revenues Decrease On Webcasting Decline
-- Infrastructure Company Becomes Digital Media Partner
-- Loudeye Acquires Overpeer
-- Loudeye Completes $20 Million Equity Financing
-- AT&T; Wireless to offer music service (With Loudeye)
-- Loudeye, Microsoft team on music store
-- Music market winks at Loudeye [Jun.22: Link] | Music |UK/Europe |VC/M&A; | [12:39AM]

 Friends Reunited Buys Aussie Site Schoolfriends.com: UK communty site Friends Reunited has made its first major acquisition, with the purchase of an Australian counterpart called Schoolfriends.com, in a deal estimated to be worth as much as £1m.
Schoolfriends.com has 1m members for its Australian and New Zealand reunification service, and also has sites for people who went to school in the UK, Ireland, Malaysia, Hong Kong, South Africa and Singapore. [Jun.22: Link] | Community |UK/Europe |VC/M&A; | [12:34AM]

 Indie Music Riding The Digital Surge: News.com discovers that the Internet is having a profound impact on how indie musicians distribute their work, and come up with this heavy conclusion: "The trend could one day reduce the percentage of music sales currently controlled by a handful of heavily promoted acts and boost recognition for a greater number of less-popular artists."
Of course parent company CNET networks has its own indie music promo/upload site at music.download.com, and also bought out MP3.com, which was relaunched recently as a music info site... [Jun.22: Link] | Music | [12:32AM]

 Realtones For 4.00 Each?: The Guardian UK, which has tied up with EMI to offer song downloads from the Glastonbury festival for 99p, is also offering ringtones...um, realtones. Clips from songs as ringtones, that is. But hold your breath: these tones cost £4.00 each. Holy mother of god...what the hell are they thinking? The tone is so expensive that it is billed to the user's phone via three reverse charged text messages (2 x £1.50 and 1 x £1). Talk about killing a golden goose...
Related:
-- UK Newspapers To Get Into Digital Music Fray
-- The Mobile-Online Music Disconnect: What Will It Take? [Jun.22: Link] | UK/Europe | [12:11AM]

 Apple Unveils Adapter to Link iPod to Some BMWs: Apple has unveiled an adapter that lets users of its iPod digital music player connect them to stereo systems in some BMW and Mini Cooper models and use buttons on the steering wheel to play their music libraries.
The adapter, priced at $149, would work in BMW's 3 Series, Z4 Roadster, X3 and X5 SUVs and the Mini Cooper, and will be powered by the car, not the iPod's battery. [Jun.22: Link] | Apple |Media Hardware | [12:10AM]

 OhmyNews Profitable: The much-written about collaborative Korean news site OhmyNews gets written about in Newsweek, this time by Christopher Schroeder, the former head of WaPo Online and the current VP for strategy at the parent Washington Post Company...
OhmyNews reached profitability last fall, driven primarily by advertising (ranging from small merchants to Samsung) with additional revenue from conferences, content licenses and voluntary donations from users. Although ad revenue is expected to grow 50 percent this year, Oh suspects that remaining profitable will remain a challenge. [Jun.22: Link] | Nanopublishing | [12:10AM]

 Scott Blum's Latest Media-Commerce Foray: IM.com: Seems like Buy.com founder Scott Blum hasn't learned from his BuyMusic.com blunder. The Barry Diller-wannabe has tried to mix media and commerce in his various ventures over the years, but has somehow never come up with the right mix.
Well, what do you know: he's trying again. His incubator ThinkTank is working on a new company called Instant Media, at IM.com. IM.com will be a desktop application which will try to combine, what else, digital media and commerce. It will mix search, digital media commerce and delivery--ability to buy digital music, movies and games, among other things--and general web browsing. The client will also have media playback and management capabilities, with the ability to rip your own CDs and plug it into this desktop app...(Wonder if it will allow managing media bought from other sources, or even things like the ability to plug in RSS feeds?)
The venture is still in its infancy, and Instant Media has just started hiring programmers for the venture...
A bit of history: IM.com used to be the domain for Internet Motors, another Scott Blum-portfolio company which tried to develop "entertainment, information, and commerce services for wireless delivery to automobiles, with a focus on entertainment-driven services." Internet Motors raised $2 million in 2001 from ThinkTank, but never really took off the ground.
I guess Blum figured that IM.com would be a good domain name to capitalize on, now that things in the Internet space are looking up again...
Neither Buy.com nor ThinkTank responded to queries...
Related:
-- BuyMusic To Fold; Integrated Within Buy.com
-- Rainy Days for Online-Music Start-Ups
-- BuyMusic and Get Loaded? -- Launch of the site in July 2003 [Jun.21: Link] | Broadband | [11:53PM]

 Bloomberg To Unbundle Data Feed From Terminals: Well, it was only a matter to time...Bloomberg couldn't ignore the Web-effect, that is, individual business users now used to their PCs as a conduit to everything. But don't read too much into it until it finally happens...
The financial services provider is prepping the launch of a long-awaited data-feed product that would finally sever ties between the company's content and its terminals. Bloomberg's "Fat Pipe Feed" would be formally launched in September.
According to the Post, Bloomberg's entrance into the unbundled data distribution space would mark a serious strategy change for the company. The Fat Pipe product would bring Bloomberg data to desktops, an area currently dominated by Reuters and Thomson.
The Exchange Handbook: Bloomberg has high hopes for its Fat Pipe Feed and has even re-designated the Open Bloomberg Server as its Thin Pipe Feed. A new feed supplier, Relegance, has sealed a distribution agreement with Radianz. Bloomberg is further rumoured to be talking to IBM about bringing to market an "independent" data distribution platform to compete with RMDS..."
Related:
-- Bloomberg Overtakes Reuters In Data Sales [Jun.21: Link] | Biz/Fin | [03:25PM]

 Industry Moves: New Editor For MIT's Technology Review: Jason Pontin, formerly of Red Herring magazine, has been appointed editor-in-chief of Technology Review.
Most recently, Pontin served as editor-in-chief of The Acumen Journal, a monthly publication covering the business, economic, and political implications of discoveries in the life sciences. (It closed down) Pontin succeeds Robert Buderi, who returned to the editor-at-large position earlier this spring. [Jun.21: Link] | Industry Moves |Magazines | [03:24PM]

 Industry Moves: Penton Names New CEO: Trade media company Penton has named David Nussbaum as CEO..he succeeds Thomas Kemp. Nussbaum is an executive VP of Penton Media and president of Penton's Technology & Lifestyle Media Division, which represents slightly more than half of the company's revenues and operating cash flow. [Jun.21: Link] | Industry Moves | [03:23PM]

 Management Shakeup At MusicNow: After the buyout by Circuit City, the online music company MusicNow is going through a management shakeup...CEO Scott Kauffman left to join Zinio as CEO, though he'll remain on the board.
Now Gary Cohen, co-founder of MusicNow, has been appointed to serve as the company's president. Chris Gladwin, MusicNow's COO and co-founder, is leaving the company in order to pursue new opportunities.
Cohen will oversee the company's rollout of MusicNow into Circuit City stores. MusicNow is under CC's relatively new division Circuit City Direct, which looks after online and phone sales.
Related:
-- MusicNow CEO Leaves; Joins Zinio As CEO
-- Circuit City To Buy MusicNow [Jun.21: Link] | Music | [02:39PM]

 MSN's Go Slow Music Strategy (reg. req.): Yusuf Mehdi, the Microsoft vice president who runs MSN, talks about the site/company: "There have been a lot of music services that have come out -- we won't name names -- and they've just not done a good job. They're not very simple. They're hard to use. They don't work. They don't have all the music. A lot of the basics that I think are critical to making a service have not been done, and they take time."
"There's a lot of things that aren't yet done that we will enable when we come out that will be big." [Jun.21: Link] | Microsoft |Music | [02:20PM]

 UK Patent Firm Details Ambitious Electronic Publishing Claim: A UK organisation's Web patents appear to address many fundamental electronic publishing applications...British Technology Group (BTG) is armed with six patents in its battle with a number of unnamed technology companies over the claim that it has patented the process of downloading software updates over the Internet. [Jun.21: Link] | UK/Europe | [01:34PM]

 Embedding the Internet in Newspaper Processes: The future of newspaper priting world: Ad systems are all web-enabled, tearsheets are being delivered electronically, and news-editorial systems assume that reporters are working in a connected world and actually care about web links. [Jun.21: Link] | Newspapers | [01:28PM]

 The Mobile Music Terminology: Let's get this straight...Emily over at Ringtonia has done a great service for the industry, and is trying to standardize all the different types of ringtones and terminologies which have crept up in the last few years...As she says, "It's really getting confusing as different words are being used to describe the same thing, particularly with regard to real music played on cell phones."
So if you want to find out what Ringtones, MP3 Ringtones, Mastertones, Ringtone Masters, Truetones, Realtones, Music tones, Covers, Real Ringtones, Musitones, Soundalikes, Voice tones, Speechtones and Ringtalkers, and all of these mean, go over to her site (Linked above). [Jun.21: Link] | Music |Wireless | [01:18PM]

 BBC Wins Online Olympic Rights: The BBC has won the online rights to cover the 2010 Winter Olympics and 2012 Games, as it prepares to offer live broadband coverage of the Athens games this summer. for UK audiences.
The contract with the IOC, which also covers TV and radio rights, is worth around £500m for both the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and 2012 Games, which could be hosted in London. [Jun.21: Link] | BBCi |Sports |UK/Europe | [01:05PM]

 MocoNews.net: New Design, New Commitment: I've redesigned my sister site MocoNews.net, which covers mobile content sector in all its depth. The attempt is to simplify the layout, make individual post more linkable, ability to comment, and most importantly for me, making the site database driven.
This also marks the start of my business development efforts for this site...I've been too busy with sales for my main paidContent.org site, so haven't done any sales efforts for this site yet. But that is changing soon...
If you're interested in advertising, ping me...
PS: In case you are wondering, yes, I've moved from Movable Type blog/CMS system to WordPress, which I like a lot. It is still in its infancy, but promises to develop into a great one in another 6-8 months, for sure... [Jun.21: Link] | Wireless | [02:55AM]

 Cable Nets See Web Starting to Pay Off: With economic recovery under way and an online ad rebirth spurred by the growth in broadband penetration over the past year, Scripps Networks and ESPN are among the big cable content players that have seen advertising increase for their broadband properties during the upfront. In addition, both networks, along with Foxnews.com and others, are putting the infrastructure in place to accommodate further growth during the next year.
Ad agencies are redefining their internal divisions to align broadband video buying more closely with traditional TV buying in anticipation of a bigger broadband market in next year's upfront. [Jun.21: Link] | Broadband | [02:54AM]

 OD2 Announcement Expected Today: Even IHT is saying that a partnership, or even an outright sale, could be announced as soon as Monday. Is it MSN? Or BT? Or someone else? You'll hear about it here, faster than anywhere else, as usual...
Related:
-- OD2 Sale Announcement Today?
-- OD2 Postpones Announcement To Monday [Jun.21: Link] | Music |UK/Europe | [02:36AM]

 The Digital Music Market in Europe: A Series: The IHT has come out with a great series of stories on the current state of European digital music market, outlining the hurdles and opportunities. The story comes as stateside music services are launching in the continent.
-- Digital music wars play out in Europe: A story on the current music players in EU, and how mobile music combined with online would be a better bet for companies.
-- 'Monopolies' slowing online music in Europe: "These collecting societies have been accused of trying to perpetuate their cozy unchallenged positions as gatekeepers for the royalties owed to their members. They are not yet an integrated part of the borderless world of the Internet."
-- Major music labels fight back in Europe: Is digital distribution the key to recovery?
-- Digital music protection improves, but it's still not perfect: In Europe, the introduction of DRM is further complicated by taxes imposed on blank digital media, like CDs, and on hardware devices such as PC hard drives, CD burners and MP3 players in exchange for the right to make private copies for personal use.
-- Band of online music pirates numbers in the millions: Last year, roughly 150 billion music files were transferred over these file-sharing networks, up nearly threefold from 55 billion in 2002. Western Europe accounts for about one-fourth of the total, while the U.S. accounts for 43 percent. [Jun.21: Link] | Music | [02:29AM]

 Music Retailers' Digital Music Alliance Fails: Some more details emerge on Echo's failure...the story first came out a week ago (I mentioned it here). Echo, the digital music consortium formed by six of the biggest music retailers, has halted any further work.
According to this story, the Echo partners committed to a combined $1 million to $2 million of funding for the consortium, with initial payments of $150,000 each. The ultimate goal was to raise $10 million to $12 million to build the store infrastructure. The plan was to nail down the licensing from the majors and then look for additional outside funding or a buyer. But Apple's entry into the market raised the bar.
Also in the story: plans on what music retailers are doign i the digital music front now:
-- Tower and TransWorld's FYE have gone the DSP route with Liquid Digital Media.
-- FYE likely will increase its download capabilities in fourth-quarter 2004 with the support of BuyServices, a unit of buy.com.
-- Virgin plans to launch its download store later this summer.
-- Best Buy does not offer online downloads. Its physical stores offer Rhapsody kiosks and Napster prepaid cards
-- Two other Echo members, Borders and Hastings, have yet to join the digital fray. [Jun.21: Link] | Music | [01:47AM]

 Japanese Online Music Market Yet To Take Off: The real reason, besides eveything else mentioned in this story, is that the primary conduit to the online world in Japan and other Asian countries is a cellphone rather than a personal computer, and so storing music on computers is not as common as in other countries.
Another is proliferation of rental shops that lend out the latest CD releases for a few hundred yen. This cheap source of music, analysts and industry executives say, also explains why illegal download services haven't been a big problem in Japan. [Jun.21: Link] | Music | [01:39AM]

 Universal to Launch Pocket CD Format: Universal Music is launching a new format - the pocket CD - in a bid to revive flagging single sales and exploit rising demand for mobile phone ring-tones. The first pocket CDs will be less than half the size of conventional CDs, and will be launched later this month.
These CDs, compatible with all existing players, would also include codes for downloading ring-tones. Universal's pocket CD project, piloted in Germany and the UK, follows extensive negotiations with retailers over stocking the new format. Asda, the UK supermarket group owned by Wal-Mart, is expected to be one of the launch outlets. [Jun.21: Link] | Music | [01:33AM]

 Context Media Raises $11 Million: (sub. req.) Context Media, a Providence R.I.-based content management, integration and delivery company, has raised $11 million in a third round of funding, led by Lehman Brothers Venture Partners. Other investors include New Enterprise Associates, Adams Capital Management and Shamrock Ventures II.
Founded in 1999, the closely-held company said it will use the money to expand its sales and marketing activities. The new funding round brings the total venture capital raised to $50 million. [Jun.21: Link] | VC/M&A; | [01:25AM]

 Sponsor Post: Borderless Systems: (This is once-a-day post thanking my sponsors...) ISPs and content providers are establishing new distribution partnerships that will bring a wide range of new services to consumers. Making these relationships meaningful requires integration between the content providers and their ISP partners. This integration enables centralized billing, single-sign-on and bundles of services from multiple providers.
Borderless Systems provides solutions that make these integrations easier, enabling both ISPs and content providers to deploy more services with more partners at lower cost and with greater profit. [Jun.21: Link] | [12:54AM]

 Replacing The Librarian: Expect this story to make librarians twitch...Librarians have increasingly seen people use online search sites not to supplement research libraries but to replace them, says NYT. Of course, sites like Yahoo and Google are rapidly working towards that role...
Google has also indexed two million book titles through the Online Computer Library Center, which manages a database of catalogs from 12,000 libraries around the world.
Other search sites are striking similar deals. Yahoo recently signed an agreement with the online library center to index its catalogs, and four months ago, it started carrying out a plan to make more of the deep Web reachable through Yahoo. [Jun.21: Link] | Biz/Fin | [12:46AM]

 Viacom's Problems (via Fred Wilson): Jim Cramer writes about Viacom's problems and how they have been compounded by Net/online media. "With that kind of precision targeting [via contexutual/search advertising], Yahoo's and Google's current [ad] rates could end up being a steal compared with what they’ll be able to charge in the future. Viacom's Internet offerings (CBS Marketwatch and CBS Sportsline), by contrast, simply can't have the size or scale they need to get big ad dollars because Viacom's Internet strategy was built on the cheap and without thought--there's no unifying paid search game going on." [Jun.20: Link] | Analysis | [09:13PM]

 The Digital Content Attention Loop: I've written about this IBM reaserch before here: a white paper by IBM researchers on how media will evolve in the next 5-10 year cycle...the lead researcher Saul Berman spoke at API Publishers Forum recently, on how changes in broadband and mobile technology will affect media consumption patterns.
"People can't really multi-task," Berman said. "People do what I call packet-switch. People are dividing their time into smaller and smaller bits." The report paints a picture of media companies evolving to the point where they pay much closer attention to what their customers want, and most importantly, to what they are willing to pay for. Berman calls the phenomenon an "attention loop" that "will enable successful companies to determine the optimal match of digital content and access rights to consumer needs and demands – and to create reciprocal relationships with alliance partners, vendors and suppliers, customers and consumers." [Jun.20: Link] | Broadband | [09:07PM]

 AskJeeves Content Aspirations: Ask Jeeves has enhanced its search engine, and introduced a packaged results capability that pushes it into the content/Yahoo space, sorta.
Its Smart Search capability, which is designed to intuitively determine what information users are looking for and package data and relevant links into a rectangular box placed above the conventional list of Web sites.
This capability, based on a combination of the company's Teoma search, natural language and structured-data search technologies, is being extended with new features, including the following categories: movies, wedding registries, tracking numbers for Federal Express and UPS packages, people search, word definitions and sports teams. [Jun.20: Link] | [08:45PM]

 New Category: Media Hardware: I've launched a new category: "Media Hardware", which covers the network home devices used to play digital media: music, movies etc...
Included in this category are companies like Prismiq, DVD players which have IP capability, Apple's Airport Express and others...
In effect, media/entertainment consumption devices in the connected home... [Jun.20: Link] | Media Hardware | [08:24PM]

 It's Fury Before Sound With Wireless Media Receivers (reg. req.): This WaPo reviewer rips apart the wirelesss media receivers: "They continue to ship media receivers that demand an agony of tweaking and leave out too many obvious and necessary features."
"I'm not happy to report that the two contenders I've just tried, Prismiq's MediaPlayer and D-Link's DSM-320 MediaLounge, continue this losing streak."
Other devices in the market: SlimDevices' SqueezeBox, Roku Labs' SoundBridge and Apple's AirPort Express. [Jun.20: Link] | Media Hardware | [08:13PM]

 Euro 2004: Most Interactive Sports Event Ever?: The online-mobile interactivity and tech-sports integration is happening right now: just look at the ongoing Euro 2004 Football (Soccer) championship. [Jun.20: Link] | Sports |UK/Europe | [07:50PM]

 Dirac From The BBC: A story on the open-source video encoding technology Dirac, which has come out of BBC's R&D; labs. BBC boasts that the new approach to high-quality video compression is different from that used in the main proprietary or standard video compression systems, typically from tech heavyweights like Microsoft , Apple and RealNetworks.
Will it cut into MSFT's dominance and other players. "Microsoft is giving away a lot of the technology for content owners to encode their offerings. The content guy will tell you they're already paying nothing. Unless this product is technically superior and blows everything away, the content guys aren't going to bother with it", according to Yankee Group analyst Mike Goodman.
On the other hand, "The BBC name doesn't hurt. A BBC effort that is truly open source could be very appealing, especially in Europe where there are strong feelings about not letting an American company become too dominant," according to Jupiter Research analyst Joe Wilcox. [Jun.20: Link] | BBCi |Broadband |UK/Europe | [07:05PM]

 The Falsely True Business Search Engine: OK, time to rip apart another flawed business model. Find/SVP, a biz info company having trouble finding its way through the chaging information landscape, has launched a business search engine called Find.com, whatever that means. It has teamed up with Empire Media and TripleHop Technologies for this. Empire and FIND/SVP each own 47.5 percent of the business, with TripleHop taking the balance.
Clickz has the launch story here...The site delivers search results from three different types of sources. Results from business sites that charge for their content, such as Gallup and Frost & Sullivan, appear at the top of the search results pages. Users can then buy the content. Results from a list of 3,000 business sites appear in the free organic listings, along with results from a variety of search engines.
The idea is to combine open-web based results along with premium content results. Combining these works well in theory, but in practice, it is a minefield to implement. And if their idea of specialization is "Let's launch business search engine", they only need to look back a few years and ask the likes of Business.com, AllBusiness.com, Alacra's defunct PortalB and others littered all over the landscape. A business search engine is not a niche...
As Outsell mentioned in its weekly e-mail newsletter this week, the challenges for the new site are:
-- The difficulty of creating any noise in a search space dominated by Google, Yahoo!, and other threats like MSN;
-- Overcoming the fact that "business users" by nature have different niche- and function-oriented requirements, and that meeting everyone's content needs is a challenge, if not impossible; and
-- Placing this offering within an overall strategy for FIND/SVP, a company that seems to be moving all over the business information map. [Jun.20: Link] | Biz/Fin | [06:39PM]

 2004 Mid-Year Newspaper Media Review Webcast: This Tuesday and Wednesday, you might want to check out the live webcasts of the Mid-Year Media Review...
A mid-year progress report from newspaper companies: presenting companies include Journal Communications, Lee Enterprises, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Media General, Belo Corp, Knight Ridder, Gannett, The Washington Post Company, Journal Register Company, Dow Jones & Company, The McClatchy Company, The E.W. Scripps Company, Meredith Corporation, Tribune Company, The New York Times Company, Pulitzer, Inc., and CareerBuilder.
In addition to in-depth presentations by senior management of these publicly traded publishers, this year's Mid-Year Media Review will feature a panel of editors and publishers who are engaged in innovative readership initiatives. [Jun.20: Link] | Newspapers | [03:06PM]

 The Empire, Laid Out: (Oh well...) Just thought I'll chart out all the publications/newsletters/blogs I'm running now...
1). Flagship: paidContent.org site and newsletter...(Daily website and daily newsletter)
2). Main Spinoff: MocoNews.net: covers the mobile content market (Daily website, and 3-times a-week newsletter)
3). Broadband Content Report: Weekly newsletter covering the broadband content market.
4) Digital Media Jobs Blog: Jobs section...both premium/classified openings, and others jobs blogged from around other sites.
5). Mobile Music Report: A monthly premium report which covers the mobile music market...Feb, March and April reports are here...
6). Digital Media Deal Report: A quarterly report (right now) covering the venture capital investment, mergers & acquisitions, and IPOs in the digital media sector. [Jun.20: Link] | [06:20AM]

 Acacia Patent War Will Move to Wireless: As its licensing push gathers momentum, Acacia Technologies, owner of some controversial streaming media patents, is setting its sights on the telecommunications and wireless industries. Acacia CEO Paul Ryan said his company already had contacted Verizon about licensing DMT (its digital media transmission patents), because its former parent, Bell Atlantic, had licensed the patents in 1994 when it was doing field trials for video on demand in Virginia.
Verizon Wireless was on Acacia's hit list, along with the rest of the wireless industry, as it moves to deliver mobile media to cell phones and other handheld devices over next-generation networks.
For all the news on Acacia patent flap, check our dedicated section. [Jun.18: Link] | Acacia |Broadband |Wireless | [07:28PM]

 Google Merges Search And Ads For Indies: Google has introduced a program that lets Web publishers add Google Web search to their site and then earn money from the related text ads. Google's other new service allows Internet publishers to narrow search on their site to a specific category of online information, such as children, nature or computer hardware.
"This is Google going out and leveraging the smaller network of sites...by saying, 'Help us get more searches, and we'll share in the revenue,'" said Danny Sullivan. [Jun.18: Link] | Google | [05:40PM]

 Wanadoo to Drop ISP Tag For Wider Broadband Offer: It is interesting to see that when big portals/ISPs like MSN and even AOL to some extent are toning down their merging-ISP-access view of the world, European broadband provider Wanadoo is abandoning its ISP tag by merging its UK portal and Internet access businesses, setting itself up as a broadband service operator across all territories.
"We aren't an ISP any more," said a company spokesperson. "We'll be offering many types of broadband product, such as wireless, voice-over-IP and video-on-demand, so everything on the portal and access side must be integrated." [Jun.18: Link] | Broadband |UK/Europe | [03:53PM]

 Nokia Puts Cash Into Mozilla: Nokia has funded a cell phone browser based on Mozilla's open-source code base, helping spur a general renaissance for the foundation's effort. The resulting project, called "Minimo," has produced a workable prototype, or "pre-alpha milestone." Minimo is getting small enough to give other cell phone browsers a run for their money, according to Mozilla.
The fate of Opera browsers in Nokia cell phones could be in doubt, now that Minimo prepares a free alternative. [Jun.18: Link] | UK/Europe |VC/M&A; |Wireless | [03:15PM]

 Ringtone Middlemen For IPO?: I'm being slightly sensationalist with this headline, but it is fun to think about...if Chinese ringtone and mobile content companies can have IPOs, why can't U.S. vendors like Ztango go public. That's not my suggestion, that's this story's line. Ztango's CEO Vern Poyner said his firm, which is private, was profitable last year and expects to make money in 2004 as well.
But then, will these middlemen survive as biggies like Sony and other labels come in, either with their own units or through acquisitions? InfoSpace (which own Moviso) CEO Jim Voelker said that the music industry, looking for any money it can find these days, is more than happy to license songs to several ring tone providers. [Jun.18: Link] | Music |Wireless | [03:26AM]

 MSN Offers Advertising Agencies Web Challenge: MSN has invited three advertising agencies to create bigger and better online campaigns to help improve the quality of the fastest-growing U.S. advertising category.
MSN will provide technical support on the project for creative directors the ad agencies Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Interpublic's Deutsch Inc., and Wieden + Kennedy New York. Each agency will choose a client and build an Internet component into their campaigns that will break in the fall. Details about financial terms and the clients involved were not disclosed.
I hope these agencies choose a smaller, niche site to experiment with...but it won't happen. [Jun.18: Link] | Advertising |Microsoft | [02:53AM]

 Disney Aims at Video Renters with New Moviebeam: So this is how it works: Starz and RealNetworks come out with a PR blitz for their new online movie service, and then the other rival movie services scramble for their PR armory. Netflix made the first move, with its 500th story about launching an IP VOD service next year.
And now Disney gets worried, rolls out its top execs in front of Reuters, and gets this Reuters plug...the gist of it is that Disney's broadcast airwaves-based VOD service would be better than an IP-based one.
"This is an opportunity for us to have a direct relationship with movie consuming customers," said Peter Murphy, Disney's chief strategy officer. "We are starting at movies, but it doesn't have to stop at movies." Moviebeam is expected to be a first step toward delivering movies, TV shows, sports and news to a range of products such as advanced cell phones or personal media players -- portable gadgets the size of small books that store and play video.
For everything movies, read our dedicated section. [Jun.18: Link] | Broadband |Disney |Movies | [02:50AM]

 Twice as Many Online Newsletters Expected in 2004: This is a continuation of the story I mentioned yesterday...As the novelty of the electronic format begins to wane, and the various content begins to blur, the pendulum may begin to swing back in the other direction, Selland says--or at least more toward a hybrid solution. "I'd expect that we will see some companies...returning to paper as a differentiator or complement for their e-newsletters." [Jun.18: Link] | E-mail | [02:29AM]

 Intel Shifts Focus To Entertainment: On Monday, Intel is planning to announce its newest foray into the home computing market, blending performance, wireless capability and multimedia audio, video and image features into a set of chips that will be at the core of the next-generation personal computer. The new three-chip suite has been codenamed "Grantsdale".
Mercury News: Among Grantsdale's features are the ability to play high-quality audio or surround sound on a PC, feed audio to a consumer stereo system or TV and play back video in broad wide-screen or high-definition TV formats. The chipsets also will include technology to let consumers set up a wireless network at home.
"There is a strong catalytic value to Intel stepping up and saying, 'We are going to create these integrated systems with stuff built in,' " said Rob Glaser, CEO of RealNetworks. "The PC as the smart hub in the home has basically happened." [Jun.18: Link] | Broadband | [02:27AM]

 Comcast to Offer Video Dating Profiles: Comcast's trying to attract younger audiences to VOD...it will test "Dating on Demand" in its home turf of Philadelphia in the next few weeks [Jun.18: Link] | Broadband | [02:17AM]

 Coke Music Site Goes After iTunes: UK music site Mycokemusic.com is defending its claim to be Europe's biggest online store in the wake of the splashy debut of Apple's iTunes music-downloading service.
The Coca-Cola site, which launched in January 2004, said in a statement it had attracted more than 2.5 million visitors in the last two months and sold 500,000 songs. Its service is provided by OD2, which I wrote about earlier yesterday as being on the block. [Jun.18: Link] | Music |UK/Europe | [01:18AM]

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