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Cisco Acquires Digital Home Software Firm Pure Network for $120 Million
PAIDCONTENT
Microsoft has confirmed the acquisition of semantic search engine Powerset. The announcement was made yesterday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but initial reports pegged the transaction at somewhere above $100 million. The SF-based company has raised $12.5 million at a rumored $42.5 million valuation from Foundation Capital and The Founders Fund and various individual investors. Semantic search attempts to extract meaning from search queries and Web pages rather than simply matching them up with relevant links based on keywords or previous or related searches.
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Nokia Reaches Licensing Agreement with Qualcomm
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Qualcomm Inc. and Nokia, the world’s biggest maker of wireless phones, signed a new licensing agreement that ends global litigation and resolves concerns about Qualcomm’s future licensing program. The agreement, released after the close of trading Wednesday, sent Qualcomm shares soaring 18% after hours. The 15-year agreement covers the current and the next generation of high-speed mobile phone standards and gives Nokia a license to all of Qualcomm patents with a promise not to use any of its patents against the San Diego company, the firms said.
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UK ISPs Sign Up to Anti-Piracy Plan
BBC
Six of the UK’s biggest net providers have agreed a plan with the music industry to tackle piracy online. The deal, negotiated by the government, will see hundreds of thousands of letters sent to net users suspected of illegally sharing music. Hard core file-sharers could see their broadband connections slowed, under measures proposed by the UK government. BT, Virgin, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse have all signed up.
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Facebook Plans Enhanced Ties to Outside Services
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg announced a number of new ways the company plans to better integrate the popular social-networking site with outside Internet services, hoping to improve the diverse array of applications delivered to Facebook users. At its annual developer conference in San Francisco, the closely held company also announced plans to begin verifying applications in order to allow some developers greater access to Facebook features than others.
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Google Officially Launches Wikipedia Rival Knol
REUTERS
Google Inc opened its website Knol to the public on Wednesday, allowing people to write about their areas of expertise under their bylines in a twist on encyclopedia Wikipedia, which allows anonymity. Knol has publishing tools similar to single blog pages. But unlike blogs, Knol encourages writers to reduce what they know about a topic to a single page that is not chronologically updated.
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Sprint to Sell Cellphone Towers, Use Money to Pay Down Debt
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Sprint Nextel Corp. agreed to sell nearly all its cellphone towers to a private-equity-backed firm called TowerCo in a deal that will generate about $670 million in cash for the struggling wireless carrier.The precise number of towers in the deal hasn’t been finalized, but it is expected to be about 3,300, leaving Sprint with a very small number of towers it owns, according to Sprint spokesman James Fisher
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Electronics Firms Partner on Wireless HD Standard
DIGITAL MEDIA WIRE
A consortium of consumer electronics and wireless technology developers — including Sony and Samsung — announced on Wednesday that they have partnered to jointly develop a new industry standard for wireless high-definition video. The WHDI (Wireless Home Digital Interface), a technology developed by Israel-based Amimon that includes a video-modem that operates in the 5GHz unlicensed band, will form the basis of the standard, which the companies hope to complete yet this year.
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Sony Opens Up E-Book Reader to Other Online Stores
PAIDCONTENT
Sony is opening up Sony Reader, its e-book reading device which is a competitor to Amazon’s Kindle, to other third party book stores. A new software update to the Reader will enable it to display books encoded in a format being adopted by several large publishers, meaning users can buy these ebooks from other stores, besides Sony’s own. The format, called Epub, means Reader can support books from supporting Epub publishers.
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Intel Launches New Tolapai System-on-a-Chip Design
ARS TECHNICA
Intel launched its new embedded x86 system-on-a-chip (SoC) today, and in doing so, moved a small step closer toward eventually competing head-to-head with ARM. Formally, the new SoC platform is known as the Intel EP80579 Integrated Processor Family, but the project was code-named Tolapai. Tolapai isn’t just a new integrated SoC; it’s Intel’s first volley into a mobile and “embedded” market space that the company believes will grow enormously in the coming years.
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Report: Set-Top Boxes Central to Pay-TV Growth
BROADBAND TV NEWS
Global shipments of set-top boxes for pay-TV operators are on track to grow by almost 40% by 2012, according to a new update from Futuresource Consulting. The increase of 38 million units comes from both new customers and upgrades to boxes with personal video recorder and high definition functionality. The company says the competitive technology push from the pay-TV sector will maintain stability within the STB industry for the next two to three years, despite the emergence of open interfaces such as the CableCard and CI+.
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CBS Radio Launches New Web Video Push
MEDIAWEEK
Moving radio one step closer to a visual medium, CBS Radio Wednesday announced the launch of a new video platform for its radio station Web sites. The new platform, powered by WorldNow, gives CBS 140 radio stations the ability to create personalized branded video players to feature station content, such as music videos, artist interviews, live concert performances, breaking news and original programming, and allows stations to syndicate content or embed clips to be shared via social networking.
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Gartner Says Future of TV Will Require Channel Integration
EHOME UPGRADES
With the Internet transforming the way individuals watch and share video content, TV producers must embrace the Internet to avoid losing control of their content, audiences and advertising revenue, according to Gartner, Inc. As a result, TV producers must integrate new channels such as social networks to enhance audience engagement, interaction and maximize reach.
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Report: Mobile Data to Hit $200 Billion This Year
MOBILE ENTERTAINMENT
Informa Telecoms & Media says data now accounts for a fifth of operator revenue.
New research predicts that global revenue from mobile data services (inc SMS) is up 27 per cent from $157 billion in 2007. Informa says data revenues exceeded US$49 billion in 1Q08 alone, equivalent to a 42.7 per cent y-o-y increase. That Q1 figure means mobile operators now generate approximately one fifth of their revenue from data services.
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Agent Video Intelligence Raises $9 Million B Round for Video Analytics
PE HUB
Agent Video Intelligence, an Israel-based maker of enterprise video analytics software, has raised $9 million in Series B funding from existing backer 21Ventures. The funding is earmarked for sales and marketing and ongoing product development. Systems equipped with the company’s video analytics software can, for example, immediately spot and report a person reaching over an unattended jewelry counter; detect a vehicle tailgating through an entry point; detect a person approaching a perimeter; or monitor how long a customer views a merchandise display
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PopularMedia Raises $8 Million Third Round for Social Media Marketing
VENTUREBEAT
PopularMedia, a social media marketing company, has raised $8 million in a third round of funding. The round was led by DAG Ventures, with participation from existing backers Sequoia Capital and Steamboat Ventures. The San Francisco startup’s latest product is SocialNotes, a widget that can enable feedback and comments on any Web site.
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