In This Update:
• Sony Buys Media Metadata And Tech Firm Gracenote For $260 Million
• Apple Buys Chip Designer PA Semi
• eBay Sues Craigslist Over ‘Stake Dilution’
• Microsoft Previews ‘Live Mesh’ Service
• Phonebook Service Zyb Acquires Bluetooth-based Social Network Imity
• Facebook Officially Launches Instant Messenger Service
• Microsoft: We Took Out Storm Botnet
• IBM Launches Servers Targeted at Web 2.0 Companies
• German Wikipedia to Be Published As a Book
• Apple Files for Universal iPhone Instant Messaging Patent
• Google Sued Over ‘Deceiving’ Ad Clients
• HP Readies Display Technology with ‘One Billion Colors’
• Korean Social Gamer Nurien Software Raises $15 Million First Round
• Social Search Start-up Mechanical Zoo Gets Angel Funding
• Urban Transit Site HopStop Raises Angel Rounding
• Study: All Major Broadband Providers Disrupt P2P

Sony Buys Media Metadata and Tech Firm Gracenote for $260 Million
PAIDCONTENT
Gracenote, the media metadata and tech firm which has been around since 1998, has been bought by Sony Corp of America, for about $260 million and more depending on earnout. The deal is expected to close in May. Gracenote’s existing business will continue to operate separately, and will continue to develop new technologies in existing as well as new areas of operation, the companies said. The senior management team will remain with the company. The company’s tech and services are used in Apple, iTunes, Winamp, Panasonic, Philips and Sony, and on the mobile music side by players such as from Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and others.
Source>

Apple Buys Chip Designer PA Semi
FORBES
Late Tuesday, in response to questions from Forbes.com, an Apple spokesman said Apple has agreed to buy a boutique microprocessor design company called PA Semi. The company, which is known for its design of sophisticated, low-power chips, could spell a new future for Apple’s flagship iPhone, and possibly iPod products as well. The 150-person chip company, P.A. Semi, was founded in 2003 by Dan Dobberpuhl, who was a lead designer for the well-regarded Alpha and StrongARM microprocessors developed by Digital Equipment in the 1990s. “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not comment on our purposes and plans,” said Apple.
Source>

eBay Sues Craigslist Over ‘Stake Dilution’
REUTERS
EBay filed a lawsuit Tuesday in the state of Delaware against Craigslist, the online classified advertising company in which it owns a minority interest. In a statement released Tuesday, Ebay alleged in the lawsuit that the board of directors of Craigslist took “unilateral actions” to dilute eBay’s 28.4 percent stake by more than 10 percent, eBay said.
Source>

Microsoft Previews ‘Live Mesh’ Service
READ/WRITE WEB
Microsoft unveiled a preview of ‘Live Mesh’, its latest effort to shed its image as a desktop-focused company and expand into web-based services. The Redmond giant says the service, which is still in limited test mode, will allow people to share and create documents or applications across different devices using the web to connect them. The move concludes two years of research led by software architect Ray Ozzie. It comes as Microsoft faces increasing competition from the likes of Amazon, Google and Salesforce that offer SaaS applications.
Source>

Phonebook Service Zyb Acquires Bluetooth-based Social Network Imity
TECHCRUNCH
Danish mobile social phonebook service Zyb is acquiring Imity, a local startup which develops a Bluetooth-enabled social network, in a cash and stock deal for an undisclosed amount. Zyb offers a social network based around its original mobile phonebookback-up service and Imity is building a mobile social network that includes location-based services tracking users via handset Bluetooth chips. Zyb claims to have more than 250,000 social network users and 16m stored contacts and says it will integrate Imity’s technology and systems into its own network. Imity’s three employees will relocate to work at Zyb’s Copenhagen office.
Source>

Facebook Officially Launches Instant Messenger Service
NEOWIN.NET
Facebook officially unveiled their much hyped chat service today. The social networking giant flicked the switch on the service which allows users of Facebook to message their friends quickly and efficiently from any page in Facebook. After a user agrees to go online they are greeted with their friends list in a pop up form on within an integrated version at the bottom of Facebook pages. Interestingly the connection doesn’t appear to be SSL so it might be possible for bad guys to sniff any conversations with your friends. Facebook is in the middle of a re-design aimed to promote aggregation for users personally.
Source>

Microsoft: We Took Out Storm Botnet
COMPUTERWORLD
Microsoft Corp. today took credit for crushing the Storm botnet, saying that the malware search-and-destroy tool it distributes to Windows users disinfected so many bots that the hackers threw in the towel. “They realized they were in our gun sights,” said Jimmy Kuo, a principal architect with Microsoft’s malware protection center, the group responsible for the Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT). Microsoft updates and automatically redistributes the software tool to Windows users each month on Patch Tuesday. Last year, said Kuo, the criminals behind the Storm Trojan — malware designed to compromise PCs and add them to a botnet, or collection of infected machines — tried to keep pace with Microsoft and the MSRT. “They were anticipating our monthly release [of MSRT],” said Kuo, “with new versions that were ready to go immediately before our release.”
Source>

IBM Launches Servers Targeted at Web 2.0 Companies
VENTUREBEAT
IBM is announcing today that it has created an Internet server that is ideal for Web 2.0 companies. Big Blue says the iDataPlex has been designed based on the feedback of hundreds of Web 2.0 companies from social networks to online gaming sites. It uses 40 percent less energy than a typical white box rack system and fits twice as many boxes in the same space. IBM says that data centers that use these liquid-cooled servers will be able to operate without air conditioning. And the performance of these machines is about five times as much as what a typical white-box rack system could do. The servers use standard hardware and software, including Intel processors. Expected customers include Forterra, a maker of virtual worlds for enterprises and national security applications.
Source>

German Wikipedia to Be Published As a Book
MONSTERS AND CRITICS
Wikipedia is to be published in Germany as a book for people who prefer turning pages to clicking links, publishing multinational Random House said Tuesday. Editors will distil 50,000 of the most popular entries in the German version of Wikipedia into the 1,000-page volume to go on sale in September. Random House, part of the Bertelsmann group of Germany, said the selection of 50,000 headwords would be based on the most common terms searched by the 15 million monthly users of Wikipedia in German. The German Wikipedia is second in size to the English Wikipedia.
Source>

Apple Files for Universal iPhone Instant Messaging Patent
APPPLE INSIDER
Apple has set the groundwork for instant messaging on the iPhone and other touchscreen devices with an application for a patent on a universal interface for real-time text chat services. Published in March, the USPTO filing describes an interface similar to the existing SMS (Short Messaging Service) text messaging interface for the iPhone, but with key changes. In normal use, users would continue to use the same bubble chat interface as with today’s phone, complete with the ability to start new messages by searching through the contact list or typing the first few letters of someone’s name. Users can also see a past chat history and remove individual conversations from the list.
Source>

Google Sued Over ‘Deceiving’ Ad Clients
ADOTAS
Google is facing a federal US lawsuit alleging that it misleads clients into signing up for its AdSense advertising service. The suit, filed in California by private investigator David Almeida, says Google signs up clients to its third-party advertising programme AdSense, when their intention is only to sign up for its AdWords, the search engine advertising service. Almeida, who signed up for AdWords in Nov 2006, is seeking class action status.
Source>

HP Readies Display Technology with ‘One Billion Colors’
COMPUTERWORLD
Hewlett-Packard Co. is planning to deploy a new color display technology it is said can display 1 billion colors, making them far more vibrant and real, across its product lines. The technology was developed by HP and DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. and is intended to ensure that colors used in movies are consistent throughout the production process and even in printing. HP says that the technology improves upon today’s widely used displays, which offer 24-bit color, making 16.7 million colors available per pixel. The company plans to raise the color display to 30-bit, which can offer 1 billion colors per pixel. The product is called the HP DreamColor display, and it follows a two-year collaboration with between the computer maker and the animation studio.
Source>

Korean Social Gamer Nurien Software Raises $15 Million First Round
PAIDCONTENT
Nurien Software, a social gaming service based in Korea, has raised a $15 million first round from Northern Light Venture Capital (NLVC), Globespan Capital Partners, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), and QiMing Venture Partners. The company, which is in pre-launch mode, will use the funding to start a beta phase in Korea later this year. It then plans to launch in China, before coming to the U.S. in 2009. It’s not clear exactly what the company has in mind, though from its description (3D interaction, avatars, MMORPG), it probably bears some similarity to Second Life. The company has spent the last three years developing the platform.
Source>

Social Search Start-up Mechanical Zoo Gets Angel Funding
DIGITALMEDIAWIRE
Mechanical Zoo, a social search start-up founded by a number of ex-Google employees, has raised $750,000 in convertible debt from angel investors and is set to launch a beta test of its service next month. The San Francisco-based company’s team includes Nathan Stoll, former product lead of Google News; former Google business development manager Max Ventilla; and Fritz Schneider, a former application security engineer at Google. The stealth-mode company “is building an application — rather than a destination site — that will help people tap into the knowledge of their social circle to find information, such as what movie to see or where to go out on a Friday night.”
Source>

Urban Transit Site HopStop Raises Angel Rounding
PAIDCONTENT
HopStop, a service that lets users map out the quickest subway route between two points in a city, has raised unspecified angel funding from a group of investors that includes Yaron Galai, founder of Quigo. The NY-based says it has passed 1.5 million pageviews a month (at least a few of which are my own). It’s not clear what the funding will go towards, other than the vague accelerating growth. In addition to the basic web service, HopStop offers mobile and voice access, as well as a service that allows businesses to offer directions on their own sites.
Source>

Study: All Major Broadband Providers Disrupt P2P
MULTICHANNEL NEWS
The eight biggest Internet service providers in the U.S.-which collectively serve more than 54 million broadband users-all “artificially interrupt” peer-to-peer traffic to some extent, according to a study by P2P video distributor Vuze. The study, released April 18, found that AT&T, Cablevision Systems, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable, Qwest Communications International and Verizon Communications regularly send false commands, designed to slow down file transfers, to BitTorrent-based peer-to-peer software. Vuze’s software uses the BitTorrent-developed peer-to-peer protocol to distribute promotional and ad-supported video files over the Internet from more than 100 content partners. Formerly known as Azureus, the company claims its application has been downloaded at least 20 million times.
Source>

Tags: Amazon, Apple, Avatar, BitTorrent, China, Cisco, EBay, EMI, Facebook, Forbes, Globespan Capital, Google, Gracenote, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, iPhone, IPO, ISP, iTunes, Local, Mac, Mechanical Zoo, Microsoft, Music, Nurien, P2P, PA Semi, RIM, Samsung, Second Life, SMS, Social Networking, Sony, Time Warner, Turn, U.S., VC, Venture Capital, Verizon, Video, Vuze, Zyb