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Yahoo may revisit News Corp if AOL dims: source
REUTERS
Yahoo Inc is unlikely to get into a bidding war over AOL with Microsoft Corp because if Microsoft gets in the way, Yahoo could instead renew talks over News Corp’s Web properties, a person with knowledge of the plans said on Thursday. Yahoo, seeking to shape an independent growth strategy after rebuffing Microsoft’s bid to take it over, has kept in contact with News Corp, the source said, but discussions with Time Warner Inc about AOL appeared further along. News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch said just last week that a deal between his company — which owns the popular MySpace online social network — and Yahoo was “very unlikely.”
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AT&T Finally Announces Free Wi-Fi For iPhone Users
IPHONEALLEY
Fantastic news from a friend with sharp eyes. AT&T has finally done something great for iPhone owners. No, they’re not unlocking the iPhone. They’re not giving it away for free, although it does involve “free”. They have finally announced that they’ll be rolling out free access to AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots for all iPhone users. Yarly. Read on for the details.
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Nokia’s single-chip phones sales volumes high: report
REUTERS
Nokia has reached high volumes in single-chip mobile phone sales, the company’s head was quoted in a newspaper as saying on Friday. Single-chip technology is used to make ultra-low-cost phones, aimed at developing markets. “We now have several single-chip phones in the market. It is one of the key factors in our cost competitiveness in cheaper phones,” Nokia Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo told Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat. “We are already talking about volumes of tens of millions.” In May, chipmaker Infineon said a project to supply Nokia with single chips for its ultra-low-cost phones had been delayed. But Nokia has said its development of the phones is on target, as it has multiple suppliers for the project, including Texas Instruments
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In Surprise, 2 Tech Titans Disappoint
NEW YORK TIMES
Like two straight-A students who uncharacteristically fail an exam, the technology titans Google and Microsoft issued quarterly results on Thursday that disappointed investors. Microsoft, which is engaged in a bruising takeover battle with Yahoo, topped $60 billion in revenue for its complete fiscal year for the first time. But it missed Wall Street’s profit expectations amid rising expenses and an uncertain advertising climate. The mixed results drove the company’s stock down more than 6 percent in after-hours trading. Microsoft’s nemesis, Google, fared little better. It also posted strong quarterly growth, reporting $3.87 billion in revenue, excluding the commissions it pays to advertising partners, which was in line with forecasts.
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Venture Capital Loves Virtual
BUSINESS WEEK
An army of startups developing tools to enhance our virtual lives attracted $345 million in venture investment in the first half of the year. Startups selling virtual goods and offering virtual experiences are raking in the venture capital these days. Perhaps it’s the fact that virtual gifting hit the mainstream in 2007 or because people are worried about the impact of business travel on the environment, but the virtual world is beginning to get its share of real dollars. In the first half of 2008, virtual worlds raised $345 million in venture investment, according to Virtual Worlds Management, a media company that covers the industry. And while it may be easy to dismiss the virtual economy as frivolous, or scoff at the idea of attending a virtual trade show as useless, deriding the intangible misses a crucial point about today’s culture: A lot of it is happening online.
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Google Buys Russian Contextual Ads Service for $140m
TECHCRUNCH
Google is buying Russian contextual advertising company ZAO Begun for $140 million from UK-registered Rambler Media (many Russian firms now base themselves in the UK). Rambler owns 50.1 percent of Begun, so to secure the deal it is buying the remaining 49.9 percent stake from owner Bannatyne Limited and then selling the entire firm to Google. Rambler says it expects to net about $50 million from the deal which will finance its investments and potential acquisitions. Simultaneously Google announced (fairly obviously) that Rambler will now use Google AdSense for Search and AdSense for Content services. The contextual advertising market in Russia is worth $225 million billion but Google has, until recently, not made much indent into the market which has grown over two and a half times since 2006. Yandex, the Russian search engine and one of the biggest Russian Web portals online since 1997, could account for 64% of the market , accounting for $145 million.
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Mixin – Social Micro Timeline and Activity Aggregator
CENTER NETWORKS
Mixin is a new Swiss-based startup that aims to aggregate your activities into a timeline/agenda. Basically the way Mixin works is that it can aggregate your event timeline from sites like Twitter and you can also place events directly into your timeline through Mixin.
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Schmidt: YouTube + ads = ‘holy grail’
CNET
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has spoken more than once this year about monetizing YouTube, but he showed some signs of patience on Thursday for finding a new, good way to sell ads on the video-sharing site. And when Google gets the mechanism right, Schmidt said he expects to hit the mother lode. “There will be new monetization forms. That is what we are seeking. That is the holy grail,” he said on a conference call after Google reported disappointing second-quarter earnings. “When we find it, it (monetization) is likely to be very large because of the scope and scale of YouTube.”
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Major EU P2P research project hopes to kill traditional TV
ARS TECHNICA
Dutch academic Dr. Johan Pouwelse knows BitTorrent well, having spent a year of his life examining its inner workings. Now, as the scientific director of the EU-funded P2P-Next team, Pouwelse and his researchers have been entrusted with €19 million from the EU and various partners, and what they want in return is nothing less than a “4th-generation” peer-to-peer system that will one day be tasked with replacing over-the-air television broadcasts. P2P-Next is the largest publicly-funded team in the world working on such technology (though plenty of researchers at Microsoft, IBM, and countless tiny startups are also racing to deliver a better P2P experience), and today the team launched a trial program designed to test its progress to date.
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Verizon Carries Olympics On 3 Platforms
MEDIA DAILY NEWS
NBC Universal will supply Verizon customers with the Olympic Games on all three Verizon platforms: TV, broadband and wireless. Verizon is also launching an HD offering of four new HD nets: Bravo HD, CNBC+ HD, USA Network HD and Sci Fi HD. FiOS TV customers will see these four HD channels launch during the next few months, region by region.
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Grim Reaper: Newspapers Cut 3,500+ Jobs in Two Months
MEDIA DAILY NEWS
Los Angeles Times Call it the Midsummer Massacre. The last two months have seen a bloodbath at some of America’s largest newspaper publishers, with substantial job cuts hitting a number of papers, including a high proportion of newsroom positions. The scythe has visited McClatchy, Media General, the Tribune Co., the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, among others.
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U.S. Air Force lets Web 2.0 flourish behind walls
COMPUTER WORLD
Blogs, wikis and personal profiles promote information sharing, but some fear they could jeopardize operational security. The U.S. Air Force is using Web 2.0 technologies to better support its missions despite wariness about security, a civilian technology official of the service said last week. The new techniques, including blogs, wikis and personal profiles, are coming out of an initiative by Air Force Knowledge Now (AFKN), a resource provided on the Department of Defense (DOD) intranet. They’re helping service members and civilian employees find the information they need more quickly and are now being shared with members of the U.S. Army, Navy and Marines, according to Randy Adkins, director of the Air Force’s Center of Excellence for Knowledge Management.
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Google Study: Search Marketing Increases Brand Value
ONLINE MEDIA DAILY
Kevin Kell of GoogleMore than merely a direct-response tool, search marketing is a great brand-building vehicle for consumer packaged goods advertisers. That was the key finding from a new study just released by Google entitled “Brand Value of Search.” “Typically, ROI models for search don’t give any value to a search impression, but this study finds that there’s brand value in a search impression, particularly in top-of-mind awareness and purchase intent,” said Kevin Kells, Google’s CPG Industry Director.
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Prague-based 1C Acquires BUKA For $80 Million
CENTER NETWORKS
Yakov is reporting that Prague-based game and software publisher 1C Company has agreed to aquire Russian video game creator Buka. The deal is reported at an estimated $80 million. BUKA generated revenues of $35 million and EBITDA of $10 million in 2007. Yakov notes regarding Buka, “BUKA, which was founded in 1993, has 250 employees. BUKA published games Far Cry, Half Life series, War Hammer 40,000: Dawn of Warfrom from Western publishers including THQ, Ubisoft, Valve, Codemasters, Lesta Studio, Targem, and CDV.”
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Become.com Raises $8 Million For European Expansion
ONLINE MEDIA DAILY
Comparison-shopping site Become.com has raised $8 million in fourth-round financing from the European Founders Fund. That brings the company’s total investment to date to $37.2 million. In announcing the investment, Become.com’s founder and CEO Michael Yang said the company plans to use the capital to enter new markets in the U.K., Germany and France. Run by three brothers–Marc, Oliver and Alexander Samwer–the European Founders Fund in Germany has previously invested in LinkedIn, Facebook and online video network Tremor Media. Become.com’s search engine indexes 4 billion Web pages to come up with the most relevant product reviews and guides along with links to retail sites. Faced with a slowing economy, consumers are increasingly turning to comparison-shopping sites like Become.com to find the best prices, comScore said last month.
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