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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   Associated Press: Product Manager/Online Services, Sports Info   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.

 RealPlayer 10 for Mac OS X to Debut Next Week: RealNetworks will announce next week the much anticipated upgrade to RealPlayer for OS X with a multitude of new features including an integrated Web browser, Rendezvous support and QuickTime playback at full screen, reports MAc Observer.
RealPlayer 10 for Mac OS X incorporates many of the same features found on Apple's QuickTime and QuickTime Pro 6.5 multimedia players as well as Real's Windows version of RealPlayer 10, but adds a large number of new features and advantages. [Jun.24: Link] | RNWK | [05:59PM]

 Adding Value to Content Behind the Firewall & Beyond: John Blossom reports from an SIIA brown bag, on enterprise search and content presentation. "Being able to get at content via search mechanisms has moved beyond the 'my algorithm is better than yours' phase to some degree, even when they matter, to the point where people are getting usable content at their fingertips based on a query. That usability is wrapped up strongly in interface design and content navigation capabilities build in to an interface." [Jun.24: Link] | Biz/Fin | [05:43PM]

 Penton Panting For Changes: The trade media company Pention media has been hit hard, and is making changes to ensure its recovery. It named a new CEO earlier this week. Now BtoB is reporting that President-COO Daniel Ramella, who lost the CEO derby to Nussbaum, will be leaving the company effective June 30.
Also, Eric Shanfelt, director of eMedia strategy for Penton's IT Media Group and New Hope Natural Media businesses, will take on the newly created corporate position of VP-eMedia strategy as Penton said it plans to expand its interactive portfolio.
"Penton's eMedia revenues have been growing at a double-digit rate, and our goal is to accelerate that growth and do a better job of idea sharing and networking throughout the Penton enterprise," Nussbaum wrote in the memo. [Jun.24: Link] | Biz/Fin | [05:15PM]

 Newspapers Bite; No Fun (via Editor's Weblog): "With television offering headlines -- and Internet blogs offering inspired commentary -- why do people want to get their hands dirty reading stale stories that fail to ring the chime of truth?" [Jun.24: Link] | Newspapers | [05:12PM]

 Ask Jeeves Increases In-Box Size For Excite: Are you excited about Excite? Yeah, though so... [Jun.24: Link] | [05:08PM]

 Top 10 Stupid Email Mistakes for 2004: Top 10 Mistakes being made daily, even by some big famous mailers. [Jun.24: Link] | E-mail | [04:12PM]

 CMP Blocks Google News?: CMP Media, the trade technology media company, is blocking Google News users from its site, reports Jon. The blocking is not happening for me...so maybe it is only some kinds of CMP content.
Interesting how CMP puts it: "That site has chosen to reproduce a significant amount of our content in a manner that we deem to be outside the bounds of fair use on the World Wide Web. We have a major, ongoing investment in producing high-quality, authoritative content and we intend to protect that content vigorously. We have explained our decision to the site in question and asked that they cease the practice of lifting significant portions of our content."
Which begs the question: if they don't want users to come through from Google News, why don't they just disallow Google news bot from spidering their site? it would be a less disruptive and less controversial move.
Anyway, it point to an increasingly defensive stance by trade publishers on dealing with news aggregators such as Google News and others. IDG is a famous example. It is famous for its rather regressive linking policies: read this: "IDG Prepares Case Against Deep Linkers"; this: "IDG Prevents Competitor from Linking to Its Sites"; this: "Deep Linking: Some Thoughts"
Also see Trade Companies To Block Google and Other Search Engines? [Jun.24: Link] | Biz/Fin |Google | [03:32PM]

 Best Buy Takes Stake in Napster With Digital Music Marketing Deal: Best Buy has reached a multiyear agreement to promote Napster as its leading digital music service through in-store marketing and broadcast, print and online advertising.
Under terms of the deal, Best Buy will receive Roxio stock worth up to $10 million over the term of the agreement and Napster will work with Best Buy in jointly funded marketing activities.
CBS MarketWatch: With a market capitalization of $167 million, the value of the Best Buy holding could be equivalent to 6 percent of Roxio's outstanding shares.
More details in press release [Jun.24: Link] | Music |VC/M&A; | [12:43PM]

 AOL To Buy Advertising.com For $435 million: America Online has agreed to buy online marketing startup Advertising.com for $435 million in cash, in a move aimed at shoring up its ad business among mounting competition from Internet rivals.
Advertising.com operates by acquiring ads from various Web sites, e-mail publishers and search engines and then places the ads for customers using its proprietary AdLearn technology based on objectives such as lead generation and customer acquisition.
The company reported an 80 percent increase in revenues in 2003 to $132 million, with a profit from operations of $12.1 million.
AP: "Online advertising is back," Miller said in a conference call with reporters. "The acquisition of this already profitable business will extend our reach." AOL vice chairman Ted Leonsis said the deal will not affect AOL's privacy policy and that customers' personal information will remain protected.
More details in press release... [Jun.24: Link] | AOL |Advertising |VC/M&A; | [12:38PM]

 Webcast Alert: Monetizing Weblogs and RSS Feeds: I'll be speaking as part of webcast panel discussion this Thursday, on monetizing RSS feeds and issues faced by the media/publishers...it is a complimentary webcast, so tune in....
Agenda:
Overview: How are Weblogs and RSS changing the publishing world?
The challenges publishers face
Weblogs as a publishing medium: For example: How to monetize such sparse content entries that come with Weblogs
Full content feeds: what are the copyright issues?
The different challenges for B2C and B2B publishers
Advertising models: Keywords v. contextual advertising
Metrics
What is the future?
Check out the details here... [Jun.24: Link] | RSS Etc. | [02:37AM]

 Turn Your Spare Change Into Coffee: And why am I mentioning it here? Hold on. Let's get to the news first...Coinstar, the supermarket coin machines company, has launched a pilot program in the greater Seattle area that lets consumers convert spare coins into Starbucks Cards. When converting coins, consumers can choose to have the money placed on a Starbucks Card instead of receiving cash. Coinstar will not charge its 8.9 percent user fee for the Starbucks Card service
Now, Coinstar is in the process of adding prepaid wireless, Truth Master Card and ringtone services to some of its machines. Voila, a new way to hawk content services... [Jun.24: Link] | Wireless | [02:36AM]

 Hollywood Media Acquires Studio Systems: Hollywood Media, a provider of news, information and ticketing covering the entertainment and media industries, is acquiring Studio Systems, a company providing database and information services to the entertainment industry.
Hollywood Media acquired the company for a cash payment of approximately $4.5 million and issuance of shares of Hollywood Media Corp.'s common stock valued at $250,000.
Studio Systems will be integrated with Hollywood Media's Baseline/FilmTracker subsidiary. [Jun.24: Link] | VC/M&A; | [02:26AM]

 Speakeasy Buys Game Server Rental Company: Seattle-based broadband provider Speakeasy has purchased Dallas-based GameDaemons, a game server rental company, and NetFire, a GameDaemons subsidiary that provides international Web hosting for large bandwidth applications. Terms were not disclosed. [Jun.24: Link] | Broadband |Gaming |VC/M&A; | [02:18AM]

 It's All Going Mobile For Media Companies: They figured? As regular readers will know, companies such as Disney and Time Warner are considering if they should provide full mobile phone services with help from existing network operators.
Steve Wadsworth, president of Disney's Internet Group, talks about his company's upcoming mobile services. For example, a branded Disney or ESPN sports service could work, he said. Focusing on specific consumers such as sports fans could help increase customer loyalty and make marketing and customer service more efficient, Wadsworth said.
For all the skinny on mobile content, read our sister site MocoNews.net. [Jun.24: Link] | Wireless | [02:05AM]

 The IM Trap: An interesting case study on how converting free consumer products into paid services tailored to a business clientele can be harder than it looks. Take the example of business IM...rather, how it has turned out to be for AOL and Yahoo. In the past week, both have decided to pull back on their corporate IM businesses.
The gist: The consumer IM services have been able to use their popularity as a way through the door. But convincing already cash-strapped IT managers to pay for something that works fine for free became a tough sell. [Jun.24: Link] | [01:54AM]

 Portable Video Goes Mainstream, Sorta (via Macworld) : While Apple continues to stress that it will not be introducing a video iPod, the market for portable video players is gathering steam, according to ABI Research.
"As price points fall, screens get bigger and form factors shrink, the market for portable video players is increasing," according to the research. However, because of their higher cost, personal video player market growth is not as explosive as that for MP3 players was in its initial stages.
Can studios find inspiration in the success of online music retailing on the model of Apple's groundbreaking 99 cent song downloads? Given satisfactory solutions to the intellectual property issues, the research author says. "Make it legal," he says. "Motion picture industry players and regulators should jump in much sooner to realize the potential of this opportunity and start generating revenue. Maybe we need another Steve Jobs, to take the portable video player sales to the next level." [Jun.24: Link] | Media Hardware |Movies | [01:32AM]

  European Online Information Market Grows 14%: The European online information market was valued at €2,799m in 2003 showing growth of 14%, according to new research by IRN Research.
Much of the increase is due to switching of existing spending from hard copy delivery to online delivery particularly in two sectors: scientific, technical and medical (STM) information; legal, tax, and regulatory (LTR) information, part of the business information segment.
By the end of 2003, online sales were contributing an estimated 49% of all STM information sales in Europe and by mid-2004, this share is well above 50%. [Jun.24: Link] | Biz/Fin |UK/Europe | [01:27AM]

 iTunes Europe Shifts 0.8m Songs In First Week: Apple said that its European iTunes Music Store had sold over 800,000 songs in the first week of launch, more than half of which (450,000) were downloaded in the UK.
Apple also drew a comparison with OD2, which yesterday announced its acquisition by US digital music company Loudeye, claiming that the UK weekly sales total of 450,000 was 16 times more than OD2 shipped: over 28,100 songs. [Jun.24: Link] | Apple |Music |UK/Europe | [12:31AM]

 Forging Yahoo's Future: A WSJ interview with Terry Semel, CEO of Yahoo, on leading Yahoo through its second phase of net search etc...
The future of search: "In our case, it is also about integrating the very large communities and groups who represent millions of people who have very specific interests and spend a lot of time on Yahoo expressing those interests through chats and through groups and communities. The advantage that Yahoo has is that we are providing a lot of those services outside of search today." [Jun.23: Link] | YHOO | [11:57PM]

 Industry Moves: Fox Names New Digital Media Head: Fox Filmed Entertainment has appointed Peter Levinsohn as president of digital media and worldwide pay television, the unit of Fox Entertainment Group.
The company said Levinsohn will be responsible for managing digital media strategy for Fox, including efforts to establish digital content protection, pursue collaborations with technology partners, and develop opportunities for the company's product in emerging digital technology. [Jun.23: Link] | Broadband |Industry Moves | [11:32PM]

 Sky Plans Internet on TV: If that sounds very 1997, well, so it is...though it does make sense, whichver side of the pond you're on. In UK, customers of Sky's proposed free-to-air satellite TV service will have access to thousands of Web-based business and personal home pages under a project codenamed Sky Net, which will be unveiled in the next few months.
The intention is to provide business and consumer content based on a Web-derived programming language developed by Sky.
This Web TV markup language (WTVML) has recently been accredited by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, giving it the status of an open standard available for use by all European digital TV platform operators.
Question: is this WTVML different from WapTV ML Sky is trying to develop as well? [Jun.23: Link] | Broadband |UK/Europe | [11:17PM]

 YooMedia Acquires 4 Dating Sites in UK: YooMedia, the interactive TV content company has acquired UK dating brands - Dateline, Club Sirius and Jiles Limited in a bid to dominate the dating market online and off.
YooMedia Dating has paid Dateline and Club Sirius Ł500,000 in cash and 1.5 million ordinary shares of 1 pence in YooMedia. The owners and management of Jiles will take a 25% stake in the equity of YooMedia Dating.
It says customers will be able to access its services either in person, over the phone, through interactive TV, online or via the mobile phone and other wireless devices. [Jun.23: Link] | UK/Europe |VC/M&A; | [11:02PM]

 Yahoo's New Consumer Access Service?: What new service are they talking about in this job ad? A social networking service tied to their personals business? [Jun.23: Link] | YHOO | [09:26PM]

 User Registration Need Not Be Inevitable: Steve Outing has written a great article on trying to capture user data more carefully, ways around asking users to register and yet be able to capture enough data.
The whole point: Might there not be other ways to target advertising and simultaneously create a pleasant user experience? Meta-data tagging is an under-explored option for news sites, Outing suggests. He explores how it might work, and how it could enable publishers to compete against new threats such as Google Local.
On a related note, If I were an online publishing exec, I would give a tooth and an arm to go to this Clik Conference organized by the Lawrence Journal-World people. Alas, it is sold out.
So why the heck is this small newspaper chain in some part of Kansas doing these great thing with online newspapers? At the cost of sounding ageist, it is young operation run by young people...if you want to attract the younger generation to your sites, let young talent run it. Get it? [Jun.23: Link] | Newspapers | [09:21PM]

 More Advice To Microsoft on DRM: Last week it was Cory Doctorow, this week it was Dave Weinberger..."A pay-per-use system and allowing artists to control their works much past launching them into the world will kill culture. Further, since publishing creates the public [a point I'd made earlier], building an infrastructure designed to allow that type of control will damage the new public of the Web as well as cripple culture. It's a really really really bad idea, so don't do it." [Jun.23: Link] | DRM |Microsoft | [08:45PM]

 Virgin May Launch Music Service in August: Virgin Digital, Richard Branson's move on the digital music market, will launch in the UK next September, a month after the service's US debut in August, The Register is reporting.
The company is assembling a range of offerings the music service will offer with a view to those launch windows. It is believed that Virgin Digital (VD) will offer both iTunes a la carte downloads and a Napster-style subscription package.
Music-derived mobile phone ringtones, music hardware and possible full-length videos are possible additions to the core music offering. That, of course, makes sense, because of the strong position of Virgin Mobile in U.S. as well as U.K. among younger audiences.
Virgin Megastores UK already offers digital downloads through a partnership with OD2. It is expected that Virgin will switch to its own partnership it announced in March with MusicNet.
Related:
-- Virgin To Launch Music Service in US, UK
-- More Details on Virgin's Music Service
-- Virgin Mobile Plans to Launch Music Service on Mobiles
-- Virgin May Show Apple a Thing or Two [Jun.23: Link] | Music |UK/Europe | [04:35PM]

 Kawasaki: Paid Content is Major Venture Opportunity: (By Peter Krasilovsky) Panelists speaking at MIT Enterprise Forum's meeting in San Diego on June 22 argued that paid content and the tools surrounding paid content might be one of three major venture opportunities, alongside wireless and open source. The meeting marked the MIT Forum's 25th anniversary and was broadcast to local MIT Forum chapters in 25 cities.
"The free ride (for content) is over," said Guy Kawasaki, CEO of Garage Technology Ventures, an investor in BitPass, a processor of micro content sales. "There are many scenarios in which people are willing to buy content. But the mechanisms for buying have been so heinous, it is hard to ask people to do it.
Kawasaki especially derided monthly subscription plans as an unsuitable alternative. "It is like being forced to buy 15 cases of Sam Adams (beer) when you want just one." He added that "there are lots of Greenfield opportunities related to the idea that people will buy content".
Fellow panelist Ann Winblad, Co-founder, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, noted that companies tied to content management as well as content analytics will probably find their fortunes tied to the burgeoning paid content environment, although she said it was hard to say when paid content would show a real impact. Winblad added that her company has tracked $5.1 billion of venture capital being invested in 1Q 2004, marking a comeback for the industry, which had fallen off dramatically during the dotcom and telecom collapse. Local venture capitalists speaking on a panel at the MIT Forum in San Diego suggested that much of the new investment was likely in Biotech and Life Sciences, rather than software, telecom or hardware. [Jun.23: Link] | VC/M&A; | [03:41PM]

 Time Warner Mulls Cell Phone Business: Don Logan, chairman of Time Warner's media and communications group, said the company is exploring possible deals with cell phone providers to add their services to its bundle of cable, data and voice products.
The move, he cautioned, is in its preliminary stages. "We're talking to all the players now," he said, but did not provide specifics.
From the details, it seems like TW would go in for being an MVNO...an AOL-branded phone service? Or a People-magazine branded one? [Jun.23: Link] | AOL |Wireless | [01:53PM]

 Job: Associated Press: Product Manager/Online Services, Sports Info: It's sports, it's online, it's AP...what's not to like? What are you waiting for? [Jun.23: Link] | [01:47PM]

 NewsGator Receives First Round of Funding (via Buzzmachine) NewsGator, the Denver, CO-based RSS newsreader client software company, has closed a round of funding with Mobius Venture Capital. The amount was not disclosed.
The funding will be used to accelerate the development process for the NewsGator product line, as well as expand the marketing and corporate sales groups.
This is the second funding I've heard of in the RSS space...the first was Pheedo. [Jun.23: Link] | RSS Etc. |VC/M&A; | [12:38PM]

 Mobile Operators To Launch Data Standards: Europe's largest mobile telecom network operators have launched a new company aimed at developing standards to accelerate customer take-up of mobile data services. The company, based on "Open Mobile Terminal Platform", will be called OMTP Limited, and based in London. More details are on the new company website.
The founding members of this initiative are mmO2, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, SMART Communications, Telefónica Móviles, TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile), T-Mobile and Vodafone. Amena, Hutchinson/3, KPN, One Austria, SFR and Telenor have expressed interest to join.
A plethora of user interfaces for mobile data services, which include wireless Internet, picture messaging and mobile e-mail, currently exist. The new alliance will look to pressure handset makers and mobile software developers to guarantee compatibility with industry standards.
The company will also look to improve interoperability between second- and third-generation handsets and is initially likely to support operating systems for mobile phones based on the Java programming language.
If you ask me, it sounds like a pressure group to browbeat handset manufacturers to comply to common standards, which is not necesarily a bad thing... [Jun.23: Link] | Wireless | [05:02AM]

 New Issue of Broadband Content Report, Out Now: The latest issue of the complimentary weekly Broadband Content Report, is online now.
Covered in this issue:
-- Scott Blum's Latest Media-Commerce Foray: IM.com
-- Acacia Goes After Cable and Satellite in Patent Brew
-- Disney Aims at Video Renters with New Moviebeam
-- Broadband Becomes a Campaign Issue
-- Tech Alliance on 'Digital Living' to Be Unveiled
-- Intel Shifts Focus To Entertainment [Jun.23: Link] | Broadband | [04:25AM]

 Lycos Considering Four Buyout Offers: Lycos U.S. is considering four buyout offers, parent company Terra Networks has announced, but stressed that it hasn't made a final decision on the unit's future. The final decision will be made soon.
FT/Reuters: Its book value today is 75 million euros ($91 million). Despite the huge drop in Lycos's value since Terra bought it, the sale of the U.S. unit could have a positive effect on Terra's earnings as the Spanish firm wrote off goodwill on the initial purchase in 2002, the source said.
Related:
-- Who Buys Lycos?
-- So Who Would Buy Lycos US?
-- Lycos US For Sale; Hires Lehman Brothers
For more on Terra Lycos' woes over the last two year, read our dedicated company page.... [Jun.23: Link] | Terra Lycos |UK/Europe |VC/M&A; | [12:40AM]

 The Best (and Worst) Video Feeds Online: OJR's Mark Glaser reviews the top video offerings from sites such as CNN.com, BBC, MSNBC, RealNetworks, TheFeedRoom and others, to tell you how some have improved while others are still lagging.
One factual error about BBC: the quality is brilliant in UK...it is downgraded for international users. [Jun.22: Link] | Broadband | [11:35PM]

 Sony Seeks Cheaper Broadband, HDTV Technology: For the next generation of game consoles to reach their full potential, the American broadband market needs to grow, Sony Computer Entertainment America president Kaz Hirai said in a recent presentation to the Congressional Internet Caucus.
Hirai's presentation reflected earlier comments from Sony that point towards a more complex content strategy for its next game console. The successor to the PlayStation 2, as SCE chief technology officer Masa Chatani explained at this year's E3, is to serve as a terminal not only for games, online and otherwise, but the broadband delivery of many different kinds of entertainment media.
Also read, "Can Gamers Force Cheaper Broadband?"
The full presentation by Kaz Hirai is available as a webcast here... [Jun.22: Link] | Broadband |Gaming | [11:20PM]

 KeepMedia's Strange Quest For Hipness: I am increasingly confused about KeepMedia mission, and I'm changing my views. What is it: a digital magazines superstore where you can browse and indulge in some leisure reading, a research site, or vendor trying to sell content at its barebones level? It fulfills none of those roles with any amount of thoroughness, even though I'll give it points for trying...
The go-slow approach may be a little too slow, if you ask me...
Why am I writing about this now? Well, I mentioned KeepMedia's ad campaign a month ago...I happened to chance on some more creative and media executions recently. Ads on Forbes.com, CollegeClub, Jazz Times and Juno's e-mail campaign...if the company's idea is to become hip enough to attract college students for a magazine reading break, then I'm afraid the Primedia stable of magazines will not cut it...
Keeping Newsweek, Atlantic, BusinessWeek and PC Magazine as the promos on the homepage is also not going to help: all of these are available for gratis on their own websites...(well, Atlantic after a month, BusinessWeek, some of it).
Point is, I fail to see KeepMedia's utility at this point. The best bet for KeepMedia, despite what I said when the company launched: go backend. A tech and business consulting provider to magazines on how they should develop and monetize their websites...
For more on KeepMedia, read our dedicated section... [Jun.22: Link] | KeepMedia |Magazines | [10:55PM]

 First Zulu Language News Site: The Zulu language has burst onto the Internet with the launch of Isolezwe.co.za - the world's first Zulu news site, or so it claims. The website carries the same content as Isolezwe, South Africa's top Zulu newspaper.
On thing bothers me: if you want to encourage Zulu people to read this pioneering news site, and "encourage them to use the Internet as an information tool", as the story says, going subscription is not the best way to do it...I'm all for developing revenue streams, and that's my raison d'etre, but a bigger social imperative has to be kept in mind... [Jun.22: Link] | Newspapers | [10:33PM]

 The Advertising Balance: The Media Drop mentions something close to my heart: how much advertising can I push down the pipe without crossing the line. There's no science to it...the bottomline is I can't break that unwritten trust...
The "Sponsor Post" explained: The "advertisement" was put in there in order to monetize the RSS feeds that were being read for his site. Think about it - we're all shifting towards a lot more "feed reading" and a lot less direct visiting of sites than we did one year ago. It's a time issue, mostly - but even so, this gives Ali the ability to a> open up a new revenue opportunity and b> perhaps take in some revenue against the bandwidth his feed takes up. [Jun.22: Link] | Broadband |Nanopublishing | [10:27PM]

 Sponsor Post: Entriq (This is once-a-day post thanking my sponsors...)

 Closing Windows On VOD Etc: Buried in this story on Blockbuster is some interesting info on release windows for movies. Studios are providing movies to cable, satellite and Internet services faster than ever. In 1999, retailers had a 53-day head start on average to market DVDs and cassettes before the movies appeared on cable pay-per-view, according to cable service provider In Demand.
Now that window of opportunity is down to 44 days as VOD orders have finally surpassed PPV.
Equally impressive, studios in the first half of 2004 licensed 20 movies to VOD in 30 days or less. That's up from 14 in all of 2003 and three in 2002. This year's fast-to-VOD films include X2: X-Men United, American Wedding, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Mystic River. [Jun.22: Link] | Broadband |Movies | [10:22PM]

 AOL Quits Enterprise IM Game: The announcement that AOL is ditching its AIM Enterprise Gateway package comes only days after Yahoo, one of AOL's closest competitors, said it was pulling the plug on its own enterprise IM software.
AOL's move out of enterprise IM underscores the lack of success the company, and its rivals, achieved in luring businesses to pay for software that many workers were already using for free. [Jun.22: Link] | AOL | [10:08PM]

 NYPost.com Taps AlmondNet for Behavioral Targeting: NYPost.com has begun using AlmondNet's behavioral targeting software to offer online advertising tied to users' site behavior. Like other behavioral targeting players such as Revenue Science and Tacoda Systems, New York-based AlmondNet lets publishers sell lower-priced ad inventory at a premium based on visitors' prior site behavior.
It has partnered with CMP Media to target ads on its technology Web sites. [Jun.22: Link] | Advertising | [09:46PM]

 More Details on Digital Living Network Alliance: I mentioned about the Digital Living Network Alliance here yesterday...the group's site has been launched today...
You might want to check out the white papers describing the guidelines... [Jun.22: Link] | Media Hardware | [09:41PM]

 Loudeye-OD2 Combo To Move Beyond Music Into Movies, Games Etc: In case you missed that part in my interview with Jeff Cavins, the CEO of Loudeye, here're the future plans: it would be any form of entertainment content delivered over IP, wireless ans set-top boxes, in the near future: games, videos and movies. The idea is to remain behind the scenes of the digital media an entertainment world, though as history would testify, that has been a difficult discipline to maintain for a lot of companies. [Jun.22: Link] | Broadband | [09:24PM]

 New Categories Added: Some new categories have been added to the site in recent days: eEditions (covering electronic/digital PDF editions of newspapers and magazines); Media Hardware (covering network home devices); Digital Olympics (covering sports tech and digital media at upcoming Olympics); DRM Technologies; and CNET Networks (covering news on the company).
Also added: a list of public companies I cover in the digital media universe. [Jun.22: Link] | [06:16PM]

 NewsStand Gets $7.2 Million in Funding From NYT Co, Others: NewsStand, the Austin, TX-based electronic editions software provider (enabling electronic/digital PDF editions of newspapers and magazines) has received $7.2 million in a round of funding led by Adams Capital that includes Noro-Moseley Partners, SSM Ventures, The New York Times Company and others.
NewsStand now powers electronic editions of 175 publications with readers in 120 countries. Also, NewsStand has recently unveiled a browser-based tool for reading digital editions of newspapers and periodicals to complement its three-year-old proprietary reader application. [Jun.22: Link] | Newspapers |VC/M&A; |eEditions | [05:49PM]

 Will Loudeye Be Loud Enough?: Loudeye's ambitions are to be admired, especially after it came out of whole storage and encoding morass, a field littered with dead companies. This is a company which less than a year ago was in danger of being delisted from Nasdaq SmallCap market. But since former Sony Broadcast executive Jeff Cavins came in as CEO, the company has made a turnaround, and has been trying to brand itself as the digital media company, providing infrastructure to the entertainment community. And that footprint has just gone international, with Loudeye's rather surprising acquisition of OD2, Europe's largest digital music provider.
I had quick chat with Jeff on the company's rational behind the deal, and the future going ahead. (It happened again: my dictaphone malfunctioned....damn. So I'm paraphrasing, and some of the details are lost...).
The rationale behind the acquisition, as Jeff explained to me, is to scale the international economies of scale for its clients in the entertainment industry. Clearly, Loudeye has the infrastructure..OD2 brings in the complex right and relationships across Europe, and the already existing relationships.
Speaking of digital media, for now, it means digital music for Loudeye. But it would be any form of entertainment content delivered over IP, wireless ans set-top boxes, in the near future: games, videos and movies. The idea is to remain behind the scenes of the digital media an entertainment world, though as history would testify, that has been a difficult discipline to maintain for a lot of companies.
And then, there's Microsoft. Both Loudeye and OD2 have close relationships with the software giant, and Jeff said that MSFT was one of the catalyst pushing this deal. The upcoming Janus DRM from Microsoft, which will enable digital music services to offer portable subscriptions, is a big thing for Loudeye, and it hopes to capitalize on that.
On how the company will leverage the offline retail and portable music devices partnerships, Jeff said that for each client, it would be a mixture of effort from Loudeye and the client. As he explained, most offline music retailers are also looking to launch their own music services, with their own branded players, so Loudeye would be a good fit in for such companies.
All of the current customers of OD2 will be staying on in the foreseeable future. And the company is now talking to all kinds of big consumer companies to launch their own music stores. Jeff likened digital music promos as the equivalent of digital coupons to be given to customers to build loyalty and affinity.
That's what Coca Cola Company is trying with MyCokeMusic (and OD2 customer) in UK. I asked him whether that means Coke will launch a similar service in U.S. and he said that it is conceivable. Loudeye is also talking to other soft drink companies, beer companies, shoe and apparel companies and others interested in using digital music as a promo vehicle.
About the name change, OD2 will probably remain as the brand for now, and marketed as a sub-brand out of Loudeye. Also, Peter Gabriel, the founder of OD2, will remain as the "spiritual adviser" to the company, and now owns a substantial chunk of Loudeye shares, according to Jeff. He will not be part of the board of OD2 anymore, and will not have any day-to-day dealing with Loudeye.
Related:
-- More Details on Loudeye's Acquisition of OD2
-- More Details on Loudeye's Acquisition of OD2--Part II
-- Loudeye Purchases EU Digital Music Service OD2 [Jun.22: Link] | Broadband |Music |UK/Europe | [04:03PM]

 More Details on Loudeye's Acquisition of OD2--Part II: More details are coming in on the Loudeye-OD2 deal. Some of them are below. I also had a quick chat with Jeff Cavins, CEO of Loudeye, on the deal, and will have details later. By the way, Loudeye's shares are up almost 18 percent in late-session trading on Nasdaq...
-- FT.com: Both men [Peter Gabriel and Charles Grimsdale] will make millions from the deal. Peter Gabriel has an 18 per cent stake in OD2, Charles Grimsdale has 15 per cent and the Quester and NIF venture capital funds hold 49 per cent after leading consortia that provided Ł6.5m in financing since the company was founded in 1999....Grimsdale said development teams would be enlarged and work was being focused on providing music services for mobile operators.
-- The Register: Virgin is expected to desert OD2/Loudeye in due course, following the formation of Virgin Digital, which will resell songs sourced from Loudeye rival MusicNet...Going forward, OD2/Loudeye's big challenge will be to find partners who can match the big guns' marketing muscle and match the pricing bar put in place.
-- Times UK: It is tempting to detect the hand of Peter Gabriel, the OD2 co-founder and musician noted for his moral stand, in the company's decision not to seek a tie-up with a more major company. Mr Gabriel this morning said he believed the merger "would deliver the best digital music service for both consumers and labels that is also committed to being fair to artists."
Related:
-- More Details on Loudeye's Acquisition of OD2
-- Loudeye Purchases EU Digital Music Service OD2 [Jun.22: Link] | Music |UK/Europe |VC/M&A; | [02:49PM]

 You're So Vain: My name is Rafat Ali, and I approve this message: paidContent.org is the world's largest B2B digital media news company...
To figure out this cryptic message, read the post below... [Jun.22: Link] | [03:43AM]

 More Details on Loudeye's Acquisition of OD2: (Webcast announcing the deal: 9 AM EST Tuesday...check the Loudeye website for link) Loudeye, in some moment of hubris, is now calling itself the world's largest B2B digital media company, after the annnouncement of the acquisition of European digital music player OD2.
According to the release:
-- the combination approximately doubles Loudeye's revenues on a pro forma basis.
-- The combined company now serves more than 200 customers in 15 countries. It will have the largest licensed music catalog, including 1.3 million tracks licensed for Europe from the five major labels as well as hundreds of independent labels including AIM, Playlouder, Naxos, Zomba, V2, Saregama and Beggar's Banquet.
-- Loudeye has retained Charles Grimsdale, OD2's co-founder and CEO, who will become the president and managing director of the combined company's international business operations.
-- For Q1 this year, on a UK GAAP basis, OD2 generated approximately $2.5 million in revenues, which represented over 80% sequential growth from the quarter ended December 31, 2003 and over 250% growth versus the prior year quarter. [Jun.22: Link] | Music |UK/Europe |VC/M&A; | [03:42AM]

 Tech Heavies Team Against Digital Copyright Law : I'm a bit confused now...shouldn't this new "Personal Technology Freedom Coalition" be connected to the Digital Living Network Alliance, also to be announced tommorow...
Anyway, the news: Some of the most influential technology companies are planning to announce on Tuesday an alliance to challenge the DMCA...
Members of the nascent coalition are lending their support to a proposal by Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., to rewrite part of the DMCA. Boucher's bill says that descrambling utilities can be distributed, and copy protection can be circumvented as long as no copyright infringement is taking place. [Jun.22: Link] | [02:32AM]

 Tech Alliance on 'Digital Living' to Be Unveiled: No one, not two, not 10...a whopping 145. Yes, a group of 145 global electronics companies will announce an alliance to support the development of computers, home electronics and mobile devices that share digital content with one another.
The group, to be called the Digital Living Network Alliance, aims to develop the fledgling market for electronic devices that can easily send and share music, movies, TV programs across the home.
The alliance will publish guidelines for building compliant consumer electronics, and will establish a seal of approval for products that meet those guidelines. A logo for certified products will be available early next year.
The group is a collection of odd bedfellows. Members Microsoft and Nokia are fierce competitors in developing software for mobile phones, while IBM and HP slug it out over computer sales.
Related:
-- Tech Heavyweights Align for Swapping Digital Content
-- Alliances Galore [Jun.22: Link] | Broadband |Media Hardware | [02:08AM]

 Industry Moves: MSNBC.com Appoints New Publisher: MSNBC.com has appointed Charlie Tillinghast its publisher and GM. Tillinghast will lead efforts including the expansion of search and personalization options, according to the company. He has been acting publisher and GM since March, when his predecessor, Scott Moore, left to head the group that oversees Microsoft's MSN.com site...
Under his watch, Tillinghast said Monday, the site is going to be "investing significantly" in making content easier to find and more relevant to each reader, based on what that person has looked at previously. MSNBC.com is close to turning a profit thanks to cost-cutting and growth in advertising revenue, Tillinghast said. But he wouldn't give a date... [Jun.22: Link] | Industry Moves |Microsoft | [01:54AM]

 Tech Firms Push for Single EU Download License: Pressure groups representing the software and consumer electronics manufacturers told members of the European Commission that layers of red tape and mounting copyright levies are crippling Europe's emerging digital media market.
The group recommended the Commission develop a single, EU-wide license and cap levies that are pushing up the price tag on digital media players, in some cases by an extra forty percent...
Rhere are 64 online music stores based in Europe, but only a few, including Apple Computer's iTunes, the soon-to-launch Sony Connect, have managed to obtain the sufficient licenses to operate in more than one territory, and none cover more than three countries.
It would be interesting see how the new Loudeye-OD2 combo will deal with this licensing complexity issues... [Jun.22: Link] | UK/Europe | [01:16AM]

 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]

 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 Ł4.00 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 Ł1.50 and 1 x Ł1). 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]

 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 | [11:59PM]

 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.21: Link] | Nanopublishing | [11:58PM]

 Sponsor Post: thePlatform: (This is once-a-day post thanking my sponsors...) From broadcast, to broadband, thePlatform media publishing system makes publishing digital media easy, fast, and cost-effective. Companies including Bank of America, CNBC, Comcast, Microsoft, and Primedia use thePlatform to publish consumer and enterprise portals, secure digital media subscriptions and pay-per-view, insert dynamic streaming advertising, and much more.
With thePlatform you can quickly and easily create custom workflow, automate business processes, and seamlessly integrate your own IT systems using cutting edge web-services APIs – all in hours or days, not weeks or months. [Jun.21: Link] | [11:58PM]

 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.21: Link] | Apple |Media Hardware | [11:57PM]

 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.21: Link] | Music | [11:56PM]

 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 Ł1m.
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.21: Link] | Community |UK/Europe |VC/M&A; | [11:34PM]

 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 Ł500m 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]

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