In This Update:
• Yahoo Mum as Microsoft Merger Deadline Passes
• ‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ May Drive Up Electronic Arts’ Bid for Take-Two
• Google Experiments with Next Generation Image Search
• CondeNet Buys Travel Blog Publisher SFO Media
• AMD Launches First Computer Brand
• New iPhone Firmware Suggests Remote iTunes Playback
• Austin Ventures Launches $50 Million Roll-Up Fund For Corporate Social Networking
• RackSpace IPO Filing Hints at Expansion Plans
• Microsoft: Vista Sales Pass 140 Million Mark
• Chinese Video Site Tudou Receives $57 Million Fourth Round
• Delay Seen for RIM’s New 3G BlackBerry
• AT&T to offer Starbucks Wi-Fi from 1 May
• Report: Average Web Page Size Triples Since 2003
• Verdiem Raises $12 Million Round Power-Saving Software
• Benchmark Invests In TuneWiki To Bring Song Lyrics To iPhone
• Akoha Raises $1.9M to Build Online/Offline Game
• Media6Degrees Raises $2 Million for Online Advertising Analytics

Yahoo Mum as Microsoft Merger Deadline Passes
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Yahoo Inc. let a Saturday deadline set by Microsoft Corp. to accept a merger pass in silence, setting the stage for the next chapter in the three-month standoff of technology titans. Impatient with the speed of negotiations, Microsoft had given Yahoo’s board three weeks to agree to its blockbuster acquisition offer, initially valued at $44.6 billion, or face the consequences. Now that the deadline has expired, the consequences are unclear. Microsoft has vowed to disclose its strategy sometime this week in a move that promises to intensify the drama in this corporate chess match.
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‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ May Drive Up Electronic Arts’ Bid for Take-Two
LOS ANGELES TIMES
“Grand Theft Auto IV” is expected to have one of the biggest debuts in entertainment history when it hits stores Tuesday. Analysts predict it will ring up more than $400 million at retail shops in the first week, topping “Halo 3,” which last fall smashed the previous record with $300 million in sales. Some analysts expect “Grand Theft Auto IV,” which will retail for $60, to ultimately sell 18 million copies and ring up nearly $1 billion in sales. Analysts say about 80% of that would go back to Take-Two as gross revenue, and retailers would get the other 20%. So to a potential buyer, the franchise would be worth “in the neighborhood of $700 million to $800 million,” said John Taylor, managing director of Arcadia Investments, which owns shares of Take-Two and Redwood City, Calif.-based EA. That’s roughly 70% to 80% of Take-Two’s market capitalization, when its stock traded at $13 to $17 a share in the months before EA’s February offer of $26 a share.
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Google Experiments with Next Generation Image Search
TECHCRUNCH
Two Google scientists presented a paper at the World Wide Web Conference in Beijing last week that outlines their vision for the future of image search. Notably, the new image search technology doesn’t just index text associated with an image in determining what’s in it. Google is now talking about using computers to analyze the stuff in photos, and using that to associate it in a ranked way with keyword queries. In effect, they’re talking about something similar to PageRank for images (but without the linking behavior).
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CondeNet Buys Travel Blog Publisher SFO Media
SILICON ALLEY INSIDER
CondeNet, the online arm of magazine publisher Conde Nast Publications, acquired travel publisher SFO Media for an undisclosed sum. The deal adds HotelChatter.com and Jaunted.com to the CondeNet fold. Quantcast pegs SFO Media’s unique visitors at 859,600. The company plans to launch a third blog, Triphacker.com. The blogs will continue to operate as standalone brands but get cross-promotion from Concierge.com, CondeNet’s travel portal
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AMD Launches First Computer Brand
REUTERS
Advanced Micro Devices Inc on Sunday unveiled its first computer brand, aimed at small and medium-sized businesses, with design and sales help from its major chip customers such as Dell Inc. AMD Business Class desktop personal computers will be followed by notebook PCs in the second half of this year. AMD customers who plan to sell the computers include Acer, Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, Hewlett-Packard Co, and Lenovo. said Hal Speed, a marketing architect for AMD based in Austin. “It’s not like retail,” he said. “People are buying this for work and we really tried to identify the nuggets (of technology for business desktop PCs) that weren’t being looked at.”
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New iPhone Firmware Suggests Remote iTunes Playback
TUAW.COM
An anonymous tipster tells TUAW that according to code found in the latest firmware release, Apple is working on a new iPhone application called iControl. Like Apple TV and other remote controllers, it would allow the iPhone to connect wirelessly to local iTunes libraries and browse through and play media from those sources. TUAW is told that a media navigator will allow you to view videos, play podcasts, listen to music and even support shuffle playback. There’s obviously no timeline for release, but since the SDK event back in February, it’s been rumored that Apple would release some official iPhone apps of their own, and iControl might be the first.
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Austin Ventures Launches $50 Million Roll-Up Fund For Corporate Social Networking
PAIDCONTENT
Austin Ventures, the VC and private equity firm, has launched its eighth mini-rollup fund in the last five years, and this is an intriguing one: it is putting $50 million into a vehicle led by former CEO of Razorfish, Jeff Dachis, to build an Austin-based corporate social networking software and services company. Dachis was one of the original pioneers of the so-called Silicon Alley in New York City, as the co-founder of the much-hyped web design firm in 1995. Razorfish now part of aQuantive, was sold to Microsoft for $6 billion in May 2007. Dachis moved to Austin three years ago. As the firm describes it, he will focus on “creating an industry leading strategic consulting practice and an enterprise class Social Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) suite.” It would be compeiting against the likes of LinkedIn, Generate (which just got bought by Dow Jones), VisualPath, and others.
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RackSpace IPO Filing Hints at Expansion Plans
GIGAOM
Data center and hosting provider RackSpace Inc., has filed to raise up to $400 million in an initial public offering. Its financials seem generally sound (unlike many tech companies it’s actually profitable), although profits did drop by 10 percent in the last year. In the coming year, the company anticipates expanding its data center facilities by a least 72,000 square feet, and may also opt to find a new data center location outside of its existing facilities. It also plans to launch a platform product for customers who want hosted infrastructure but also have the need and skills to customize the hosted infrastructure to a high degree.
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Microsoft: Vista Sales Pass 140 Million Mark
CRN
Microsoft claims that sales of Windows Vista are chugging steadily onward, and have now passed the 140 million mark. But that wasn’t enough to help Microsoft extend its string of lights-out quarterly financial performances. In its fiscal third quarter earnings call Thursday, Microsoft met the Street’s expectations but saw quarterly profit drop 11 percent from the year-ago quarter. However, the results were skewed by Microsoft’s booking of $1.7 billion in deferred revenue from its Express Upgrade to Windows Vista and Microsoft Office Technology Guarantee programs as well as pre-shipments of Vista and Office 2007.
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Chinese Video Site Tudou Receives $57 Million Fourth Round
PACIFIC EPOCH
Shanghai-based video site Tudou.com announced on Monday that it has received fourth round investment of $57 million from existing investors IDG Technology Venture Investment (IDGVC), Granite Global Ventures (GGV) and General Catalyst Partners joined by a member of the Rockefeller family, reports ChinaVenture. The investment will be devoted to business operation, broadband servers and the company’s video distribution program, according to Tudou CFO Grace Wang. Prior to this investment, Tudou had received funding of $28.3 million since 2005.
Including Tudou’s new round, new investments in the online video industry are expected to reach $100 million next week, reports The Beijing News. According to the report, Youku.com and Ku6 may be among the sites receiving investment.
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Delay Seen for RIM’s New 3G BlackBerry
FORTUNE
Research in Motion is facing a delay with the introduction of its new hotly anticipated 3G BlackBerry phone for AT&T. The release of the phone, apparently named Meteor, has been pushed to as late as August, from the planned June launch, say people close to the companies. The reason for the delay isn’t clear, but people close to the companies say AT&T had concerns about call quality. Some of these people speculate however that AT&T may be using a tech glitch as an excuse to avoid having two competing 3G smartphones launch at the same time. Apple’s new iPhone is expected to debut in June, and analysts have speculated that the release will likely coincide with the one-year anniversary of the original iPhone, which is June 27.
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AT&T to offer Starbucks Wi-Fi from 1 May
TELEGEOGRAPHY
AT&T says it plans to begin phasing in its Wi-Fi wireless internet services at Starbucks coffee shops from the start of May. Subscribers to AT&T’s higher tier fixed broadband services will be offered free wireless connectivity at Starbucks locations, while users who are part of the Starbucks loyalty card program will also be offered up to two hours of free access per day. Other users will be able to access the service on a pay-as-you-go basis. Earlier this year AT&T was chosen to take over the operation of Wi-Fi hotspots in more than 7,000 Starbucks outlets across the US, bringing an end to a long-standing contract between Starbucks and T-Mobile USA. Under a roaming agreement with AT&T, T-Mobile customers will still be able to connect at Starbucks outlets, for a charge of USD6 an hour or USD9.99 a day.
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Report: Average Web Page Size Triples Since 2003
WEBSITEOPTIMIZATION.COM
The size of the average web page has more than tripled since 2003. From 2003 to 2008 the average web page grew from 93.7K to over 312K, some 233% (Domenech et al. 2007, Flinn & Betcher 2008). During the same five-year period, the number of objects in the average web page nearly doubled from 25.7 to 49.9 objects per page. Longer term statistics show that since 1995 the size of the average web page has increased by 22 times, and the number of objects per page has grown by 21.7 times.
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Verdiem Raises $12 Million Round Power-Saving Software
VENTUREBEAT
Verdiem, a Seattle, Wash. startup that makes PC software capable of reducing energy consumption across networks of computers, has raised a fresh round of funding as it expands. Its Surveyor software can reduce the energy consumption of an average computer by about 30 percent, according to the company, lowering electricity consumption across the average organization by 3-6 percent. The payback time, it says, it 18 months or less. Although this latest funding is Verdiem’s sixth, it is by far the largest round the company has taken to date. NCD Investors led the round, while Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Catamount Ventures, and Phoenix Partners also participated. The company has raised a total of $27 million.
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Benchmark Invests In TuneWiki To Bring Song Lyrics To iPhone
TECHCRUNCH
Israeli startup TuneWiki delivers user generated song lyrics to music playing on a PC or mobile device. The service, which was launched in December 2007, became a hit with “hundreds of thousands” of downloads to jailbroken iPhones alone, despite the very sketchy nature of the main website and the fact that only hacked iPhones can use the app. The startup has raised an initial round of financing from Benchmark Capital’s Israel fund. General Partner Michael Eisenberg joined the board of directors. We’re still trying to track down the size of the round, and if there were any other investors.
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Akoha Raises $1.9M to Build Online/Offline Game
MASHABLE
A new company, called Akoha, is creating an entire site on the basis of gifting, and tapping into a social economy. Akoha combines features from gifting applications, social entrepreneurship, massive multiplayer games and reality-based games. Having been inspired by the ability for people to affect change based on the simple act of exchanging information (sharing), Akoha appears to have some greater, physically grounded goals for turning a web-based community into one that leads to tangible manifestations. Akoha is announcing a $1.9 million round, provided by a number of angel investors. The funding was provided in two tranches, the first of which was extended last year, and the second of which was extended early this year
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Media6Degrees Raises $2 Million for Online Advertising Analytics
VENTUREBEAT
Online advertising is growing, but companies are realizing that advertisers don’t just want to throw an ad anywhere, they want analytical data so they know their ad will be well targeted. That is what Media6Degrees does. As the company states: “With Media6, marketers don’t buy space – they reach interested people regardless of where they are. This not only means that publishers and advertisers get higher returns on their investments, but it also translates into a better online experience for consumers.” This $2 million round is a convertible promissory note. The investor is Coriolis Ventures, based out of New York, NY. Media6Degrees is also based out of New York, NY.
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