In This Update:
• Nokia to Buy Rest of Symbian, Form Open Foundation
• Google to Unveil New Ad-Planning Tool
• Monster Aligns With 19 Newspapers for Career Ad Network
• Visa, Facebook Target Small Businesses
• British ISPs, Music Companies Enter Serious Negotiations
• Virgin Mobile to Offer Unlimited, Flat-Rate Plan
• Study Calls for 1G Broadband in US
• Physicists Store Images in Vapor
• European 3G Subscriptions Seen Topping 100 million
• Report: IPTV Subscribers in Americas Nearly Quadrupled in 2007
• Salem Buys Christian Job Site Intercristo
• NY Times to Replace IHT News Website
• Parascale Raises $11.37 Million First Round for Media Storage
• Jaxtr Raises $10 Million Series B, Enables Out-of-Network Calling
• Yoono Raises Additional $4 Million for Interactive Browser Sidebar
Nokia to Buy Rest of Symbian, Form Open Foundation
REUTERS
Nokia will pay $410 million for the remaining shares in UK-based Symbian and make its software royalty-free to boost phone sales and respond to new rivals such as Google. Symbian’s software is used in two-thirds of smartphones and 6 percent of all mobile phones. Nokia is also establishing the Symbian Foundation, an organization meant to unify and promote the Symbian OS for cellphones. The group includes phone makers that already produce Symbian phones such as LG, Motorola, Samsung and Sony Ericsson; it also includes carriers such as AT&T, NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone as well as semiconductor firms STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments. Despite Nokia’s purchase, the company is putting Symbian and Series 60 in the hands of the Foundation and will give any current or future member royalty-free rights to use the platform.
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Google to Unveil New Ad-Planning Tool
NEW YORK TIMES
Google is expected to unveil a new ad-planning tool for agencies and marketers at an industry conference on Tuesday. A person familiar with Google’s plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the product before Google makes it public, said that the new tool, called AdPlanner, was designed to help agencies identify sites where their target audience might be active. While it uses audience measurement data, AdPlanner also combines it with search engine data and information from third parties, to determine with more precision what sites attract a certain demographic audience. It then uses that data to help agencies determine where to place ads.
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Monster Aligns With 19 Newspapers for Career Ad Network
PAIDCONTENT
Monster has formed a “career ad network” with 19 local newspapers. The move comes just as that industry feels increasingly squeezed by an economic downturn and the industry. Monster first struck an ad alliance with the New York Times Co in February 2007 and a few months later rolled out a co-branded site with its Boston Globe Boston.com site last year as well. Since then, the newspaper ad alliance space has been filled by new entrants like the NYTCO-backed QuadrantOne and the more established Yahoo Newspaper Consortium, which is planning to unveil some additional targeting services in Q3.
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Visa, Facebook Target Small Businesses
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Visa is teaming up with Facebook, investing $2 million in advertising and introducing a social networking application for small-business owners to connect with one another and to find new customers. To promote the campaign, Visa is offering a $100 Facebook advertising credit to the first 20,000 small-business owners who sign up for the network.
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British ISPs, Music Companies Enter Serious Negotiations
DIGITAL MUSIC NEWS
British ISPs and music rights holders are now engaged in serious negotiations, according to numerous executive sources in London. The talks are being motivated by pressure from legislators, who have threatened to enact their own measures to resolve massive piracy issues if the industries cannot devise their own solutions. The stepped-up pressure follows earlier threats by the British government, including a previously-imposed April, 2009 deadline for hammering a solution. But according to one source, legislators are upping their timetables, and intensifying the threat of an outside resolution.
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Virgin Mobile to Offer Unlimited, Flat-Rate Plan
CRAVE
Virgin Mobile USA will now offer a flat-rate, unlimited calling plan to compete with the big four cell phone operators in the U.S. Starting July 1, the new prepaid service called “Totally Unlimited” will include free nationwide calling with no roaming charges for $79.99 a month. For $10 more a month, Virgin Mobile users can add unlimited text messaging, IM, e-mail and picture messaging.
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Study Calls for 1G Broadband in US
PCWORLD
The U.S. should aim for 100M bps of broadband available to all U.S. residents by 2012 and 1G bps by 2015 in order to catch up to other countries that are moving forward with broadband rollouts, recommends a study released Monday. The study, by the Baller Herbst Law Group of Washington, D.C., also calls on the U.S. to create a national broadband strategy that helps state programs bring broadband to underserved areas. Neither private industry nor government programs alone can build the broadband networks needed for the U.S. to compete globally in the coming years, said Jim Baller, founder of Baller Herbst and the study’s co-author.
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Physicists Store Images in Vapor
PHYSORG
Physicists from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, have recently demonstrated how to store images in a warm atomic vapor. With their method, which is based on electromagnetically induced transparency, the researchers could store complex images for up to 30 microseconds in rubidium vapor. The technology could be useful for various image processing and correlation applications, as well as quantum information processing and even quantum communication. The scientists also predict that it should be possible to store more elaborate images, including temporal images, or movies.
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European 3G Subscriptions Seen Topping 100 million
REUTERS
European mobile carriers have crossed the 100 million mark with subscribers on their third-generation networks, market research firm Informa Telecoms and Media said. At the end of May, Europe had 101.5 million 3G subscriptions out of a total of mobile subscriptions of 910.8 million, a 11.1 percent penetration, Informa said, adding it only counted devices that were actively used for voice or data services or both.
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Report: IPTV Subscribers in Americas Nearly Quadrupled in 2007
INFORMITIV
The number of IPTV subscribers in North and South America reached 1.8m in 2007, almost four times more than the 501,000 viewers recorded in 2006, according to an iSuppli study. The Verizon FiOS service had 943,000 subscribers at the end of 2007, while the AT&T U-Verse service had 231,000. Taken together this represents nearly a 300% increase on the previous year but still represents rather slow progress. Meanwhile, satellite subscriber numbers rose. DirecTV added 878,000 net subscribers over the year, reaching 16.8 million at the end of 2007. Dish Network had 13.7 million subscribers at the end of 2007, up 675,000 on the previous year.
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Salem Buys Christian Job Site Intercristo
PAIDCONTENT
Salem Communications, the Christian and family-themed media company and owner of TownHall.com, is continuing to buy smaller sites: it has now bought Intercristo.com, one of oldest Christian employment websites, from CRISTA Ministries. Salem already owns other job-focused websites, ChristianJobs.com and ChurchStaffing.com.
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NY Times to Replace IHT News Website
REUTERS
The New York Times Co plans to merge the International Herald Tribune website and non-U.S. coverage from The New York Times into a joint “international edition”, according to an internal memo. Aiming to improve advertising revenue and attract a larger global audience, the joint site will include internationally focused stories from the New York Times and from the International Herald Tribune, a European-focused, English-language paper owned by the Times.
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Parascale Raises $11.37 Million First Round for Media Storage
PAIDCONTENT
Parascale, a provider of cloud storage targeting the media industry, has raised an $11.37 million first round from Charles River Ventures and Menlo Ventures. The company will use the funding to launch its Parascale Cloud Storage application. The Cupertino, CA-based company is targeting such applications as video-on-demand, digital document archiving, as well as various technical media services. CEO Sajai Krishnan was previously at NetApp.
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Jaxtr Raises $10 Million Series B, Enables Out-of-Network Calling
TECHCRUNCH
Jaxtr, the online VoIP service that also offers a social network, has launched out-of-network calling that will allow users to call phone lines around the world. The new service will allow users to call family and friends (even non-members) from their own phones for a fraction of the costs associated with traditional long distance calling. The company has also raised a $10 million Series B funding round led by Lehman Brothers Venture Partners.
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Yoono Raises Additional $4 Million for Interactive Browser Sidebar
MASHABLE
Yoono announces its latest round of funding today, raising an additional $4 million from original investor Assurances Generales de France (AGF). Yoono has also indicated that it will be seeking additional funding from a US-based investment company in order to establish some roots in the US and further its US growth in the online market. Coinciding with the funding announcement, Yoono is also launching its public beta. As Yoono’s sidebar widgets turn your browser into a platform for media-sharing, there are a number of easy management tools that allow you to send updates across multiple networks, bookmark and clip portions of websites, chat, and directly share media with others on the Yoono platform.
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Tags: 3G, Boston, Brand, Charles River Ventures, Cisco, CNET, DirecTV, Dish, EMI, Facebook, FIOS, Google, Informa, Intercristo, IPTV, ISP, Jaxtr, Local, Motorola, Music, Nokia, NY Times, Parascale, Salem, Samsung, SEC, Smartphone, Social Networking, Sony, Symbian, Texas Instruments, Tribune, Turn, U.S., Verizon, Video, Video-on-demand, VOD, widget, Yahoo, Yoono