In This Update:
• EU Backs DVB-H Mobile TV Standard
• Yellowpages.com Signs Ad Deal with Microsoft
• Meebo Seeking To Raise Third Round of Funding At $25-$30 Million
• ValueClick Pays $2.9 Million to Settle Spam Accusations
• TiVo Adds Web Video
• LimeWire Launches DRM-Free Online Music Store
• IBM Builds World’s Smallest Photonic Switch
• Search Specialist 360i Buys Interactive Design Marketer i33
• Nickelodeon Developing 600 Casual Games; $100 Million Investment
• BT Facing Legal Threats Over Secret Phorm Testing
• MySpace Mobile Officially Launches
• Intel Software Stretches WiFi Signals 60 Miles
• Luminus Devices Raises $72 Million for LED TV Technology
• Clearleap Raises $9 Million First Round For Advanced TV Delivery
• Hitachi’s New Technology Recognizes Characters in Video Subtitles
• Ziff Davis Enterprise Secures $20 Million Funding To Promote Acquisitions
• Report: Multimedia Phones to Outsell TV Sets in 2008

EU Backs DVB-H Mobile TV Standard
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The European Union on Monday chose a mobile TV broadcast standard and suggested that its member governments now ask cell carriers to favor it. EU commissioners chose DVB-H, or Digital Video Broadcasting for Handhelds, the most widely used mobile TV format in Europe, over rival standards such as Qualcomm Inc.’s MediaFLO and another known as DMB that is favored by Chinese and South Korean manufacturers. DVB-H is supported by the world’s largest handset maker, Nokia, as well as Motorola, Philips, Sagem, Sony, Ericsson, Samsung and major European cell phone operators Vodafone, O2 and T-Mobile. By contrast, Qualcomm’s technology has signed up the two biggest players in the United States – Verizon Wireless and AT&T.
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Yellowpages.com Signs Ad Deal with Microsoft
REUTERS
AT&T’s Yellowpages.com has reached a deal with Microsoft to place advertising listings on Microsoft’s local search sites. Under the agreement, advert listings will appear on local sites such as MSN Live Search and Live Search Maps. The pact aims to give Yellowpages.com advertisers access to Microsoft’s search pages. The deal also will increase the total number of estimated monthly searchers and bring the total number of projected monthly searches on Yellowpages.com to over 160mi, says AT&T. Yellowpages.com will begin supplying ads to Microsoft in early April. No financial terms were released.
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Meebo Seeking To Raise Third Round of Funding At $25-$30 Million
PULSE2.0
Meebo is an online application that allows users to log into several different instant message systems remotely. These IM systems include AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, and Jabber. Meebo launched in 2005 and received $12.5 million in funding from Sequoia Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Over 100 million IMs are sent daily through Meebo. Several media companies use Meebo to connect to their fans through by using Meebo’s chat room features. The rumor on the Internets is that Meebo is looking to raise an additional $25-$30 million. And that Meebo has hired San Francisco, Calif.-based investment bank, Montgomery & Co. to help find an investor. If Meebo is able to raise those funds, their valuation could become $250 million. Meebo receives 29 million monthly unique visitors per month.
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ValueClick Pays $2.9 Million to Settle Spam Accusations
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Online advertiser ValueClick Inc. will pay $2.9 million to settle charges that it made deceptive claims in e-mails and online ads, the FTC said Monday. Westlake Village, Calif.-based ValueClick had said last month it would pay the fine to settle the matter, without admitting that it violated any laws. The company said in February that it took a $2.9 million charge against fourth-quarter earnings to account for the settlement. ValueClick’s Hi-Speed Media subsidiary violated the anti-spam act, the FTC alleged, by sending spam e-mail that offered consumers “free gifts” to lure consumers to ValueClick’s Web sites. Consumers then learned that they had to purchase satellite television subscriptions, obtain car loans or buy other expensive products or services in order to obtain the gifts, the FTC alleged.
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TiVo Adds Web Video
CRAVE
TiVo has added the ability to view downloadable Web videos on the company’s DVRs, making good on its announcement at January’s Consumer Electronics Show. The update will allow Web videos such as video podcasts to be downloaded with the same Season Pass functionality used by TiVo viewers to record their favorite TV shows. But don’t expect to just punch in a URL or an RSS feed into the TiVo remote. Videos must first be downloaded to your PC’s hard drive, after which they’ll be transferred to your TiVo via your home network. That’s a departure from Amazon Unbox videos, the Rhapsody subscription music service, and TiVo’s forthcoming YouTube service, all of which are accessible online straight through TiVo’s on-screen interface without the need to have a PC running elsewhere in the home.
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LimeWire Launches DRM-Free Online Music Store
PC PRO NEWS
Limewire has launched a DRM-free music store, which will attempt to lure money from those users who might otherwise download pirated copies. Limewire will display a button next to each track on its P2P application, allowing users to buy that song via its own store. Files will be stored centrally on the company’s servers, rather than being distributed over P2P. As well as the application button, users will be able to buy tracks from Limewire’s new online store. The company will be offering tracks for 99 cents each, but those who choose to sign up for a monthly subscription can lower this cost.
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IBM Builds World’s Smallest Photonic Switch
ITWIRE
Scientists at IBM’s TJ Watson Research Center have created a nanophotonic switch so small that 2000 of them could fit into an area as small as one square millimetre. The development has implications for future multicore processor designs. Apart from its small size, an advantage of IBM’s design is that the device can switch multiple wavelengths simultaneously with an aggregate bandwidth of over 1Tbps.
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Search Specialist 360i Buys Interactive Design Marketer i33
PAIDCONTENT
Digital marketer 360i has bought the similarly named interactive ad shop i33. Terms were not disclosed. The New York-based i33, which also has an office in Detroit, will give the independent 360i design skills. 360i is mostly known for its search marketing work. i33 also prides itself as a developer of social media apps and widgets, websites. As a result of the acquisition, i33 will add existing clients such as Marvel Entertainment (NYSE: MVL), PBS, New Era Cap, Target and Borders to 360i’s roster. i33 was started in 1995, three years before New York’s 360i opened its doors for business.
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Nickelodeon Developing 600 Casual Games; $100 Million Investment
NEW YORK TIMES
Viacom, the parent company of Nickelodeon and MTV, is moving aggressively into casual games. On Tuesday, Nickelodeon is expected to announce the first of 600 original and exclusive games for its network of Web sites, as part of a $100 million investment in game development. With a series of customized sites for different age groups (preschoolers, tweens, teenage boys, moms), Nickelodeon calls itself the “biggest gaming network in the country.” Movie studios, video game publishers, and toy makers are among the top marketers on the sites.
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BT Facing Legal Threats Over Secret Phorm Testing
PC PRO NEWS
BT is facing legal action from subscribers, following admission that it secretly allowed data monitoring and advertising company Phorm to use its network in a test program last year. BT subscribers have reported ‘suspicious’ redirections of web traffic that they believe is related to Phorm’s ad targeting technology. BT confirms that it did run a limited trial that may have affected some customers, although it maintains it was a small-scale project and that no personal data was stored or disclosed to Phorm. The controversial ad-serving technology is scheduled for rollout on BT’s network sometime later in the year. The operator yes to disclose whether it will be an optional service that customers can opt out of. Scholars and think tankers are pointing out that Phorm may actually be illegal based on current UK laws, if it’s used without first getting users to opt-in.
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MySpace Mobile Officially Launches
MASHABLE
MySpace Mobile launched its beta some time ago, but today marks the official launch of the reigning social network’s mobile platform. The core features are all the same. You can access your MySpace messages, see friends’ profiles, view photos, search for other users, and post comments as well as entire blog entries. With partnerships with various mobile service providers, such as Sprint, MySpace is making itself easily accessible to users, and relatively easy to use.
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Intel Software Stretches WiFi Signals 60 Miles
TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
Intel has announced plans to sell a specialized Wi-Fi platform later this year that can send data from a city to outlying rural areas tens of miles away, connecting sparsely populated villages to the Internet. The wireless technology, called the rural connectivity platform (RCP), will be helpful to computer-equipped students in poor countries, says Jeff Galinovsky, a senior platform manager at Intel. And the data rates are high enough–up to about 6.5 megabits per second–that the connection could be used for video conferencing and telemedicine, he says. Already, Intel has installed and tested the hardware in India, Panama, Vietnam, and South Africa. Later this year, the company will sell the device in India, with a target price below $500. The point-to-point technology will require two nodes, which could provide “full back-end infrastructure” for less than $1,000, Galinovsky says.
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Luminus Devices Raises $72 Million for LED TV Technology
CNET
Luminus Devices, a company that wants to change the lighting systems in digital TVs and in buildings, has raised $72 million in its latest round of funding. The company, which grew out of research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, makes the Phlatlight LED (light-emitting diode), a type of LED that combines some of the qualities of both LEDs and lasers. The Phlat in Phlatlight stands for “photonic lattice structures.” Basically, the lattice creates a situation where light can be precisely controlled (like a laser). The Phlatlight also can extract large amounts of light per watt, like an LED. Investors include Braemar Ventures and CMEA.
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Clearleap Raises $9 Million First Round For Advanced TV Delivery
PAIDCONTENT
Atlanta-based Clearleap, a developer of video delivery technology, has raised a $9 million first round from Trinity Ventures and Noro-Mosely Partners. The company, which was founded last year, is aiming to meld the breadth of internet content with the quality and ease of traditional TV delivery. Beyond that, it is still pretty tight with details on its technology. Its target customers are mainly TV operators of various sorts (cable, satellite, IPTV), to whom its offering a new mode of internet delivery. CEO Braxton Jarratt was previously at digital TV firm Tandberg Television, a unit of Ericsson.
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Hitachi’s New Technology Recognizes Characters in Video Subtitles
TECHON
Central Research Laboratory of Hitachi Ltd developed a technology that recognizes characters in the subtitles of videos such as television shows. The new technology enables to search characters in subtitles so that users can quickly find the scenes that they want to watch. There has been a technology that recognizes characters in subtitles. But it has been difficult to recognize characters when the colors or brightness of them differs in the same line and when they are mixed with frames or graphics. The new technology realizes a practical recognition rate even in these cases, Hitachi said.
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Ziff Davis Enterprise Secures $20 Million Funding To Promote Acquisitions
PAIDCONTENT
B2B tech publisher Ziff Davis Enterprise (separate from the bankrupt Ziff Davis Media) has raised $20 million in funding from Bessemer Venture Partners. ZDE will use the funding to pursue acquisitions and create services related to audience development, social media, and contextual content. In terms of the acquisitions, ZDE is looking towards buying small- to mid-sized technology companies in emerging markets.
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Report: Multimedia Phones to Outsell TV Sets in 2008
HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
Consumers worldwide will buy more multimedia mobile phones than TV sets this year, according to a new report from Research and Markets. The Dublin, Ireland-based firm predicts that 300 million such phones that can play audio and video and browse the Internet will be sold in 2008. Its new report, “Mobile Media 2008: The Third Screen for Entertainment,” also found that half the world’s population, or 3.3 billion people, now have a mobile phone subscription. “The potential size of the market for mobile media is staggering,” the report noted.
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