In This Update:

• Electronic Arts to Let Take-Two Offer Lapse
• KickApps Partners with Akamai on Video Hosting
• New Web Site Aims to Be Facebook for Sports Fans
• A Surprise Winner at the Olympic Games in Beijing: NBC
• Report: Media Companies Joining YouTube and Profiting
• Google Quietly Launches AdSense for Feeds
• True Games Interactive Sells Majority Stake to India’s UTV
• Replay Solutions, Testing Automation for Software Development, Raises $11 Million
• Ipanema Tech, Provider of Application Traffic Management, Raises $7 Million
• Envysion, Provider of Mangaged Video-as-a-Service, Raises $3 Million

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Progress Partners client, Wavexpress, has partnered with NBC Sports and Microsoft to offer HD coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics in Windows Vista Media Center. To download the application and watch Olympics events,visit: http://www.tvtonic.com/olympics/install/?referrer=pp

Electronic Arts to Let Take-Two Offer Lapse
PAIDCONTENT
Electronic Arts’ latest tender offer for rival gamer Take-Two expired today, and the company didn’t announce a one month extension. Due to the passage of time and the challenge of integrating the companies before the holidays, EA says it can no longer support the assumptions implicit in its $25.74 offer price, and needs further due diligence. The next step: EA management will receive a full-on briefing from Take-Two management, which will include “material, non-public information”. Take-Two will give a formal pitch to EA, explaining why they’re worth more than $25.74 per share. How that will play out is unclear, but it could be a step towards a friendly merger.
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KickApps Partners with Akamai on Video Hosting
CENTERNETWORKS
NY-based white label social networking provider KickApps has announced a new partnership today with Akamai. The partnership will bring Akamai’s Stream OS video management system into the KickApps video player. The Stream OS provides KickApps customers with high-end video management and the Akamai media player will allow for ad integration inside the KickApps video player. KickApps notes that the combined offering provides web publishers with drag-and-drop video player creation, a comprehensive media management system, social media enhancements, HD video players, and new video revenue opportunities.
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New Web Site Aims to Be Facebook for Sports Fans
TECHCRUNCH
David Katz, a former Yahoo executive who used to run Yahoo Sports, is trying something different with SportsFanLive , which has just launched in beta. Rather than being organized around the big sports headlines of the day, SportsFanLive is organized around the fans themselves and the obsessions. Instead seeing the same general sports information that everyone else sees on the homepage and taking thre or four clicks to get to the page about your team, SportsFanLive lets you put the information you want up front.
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A Surprise Winner at the Olympic Games in Beijing: NBC
NEW YORK TIMES
After a string of disappointing years in prime time, NBC executives had high hopes for a turnaround with the Beijing Olympics; but those hopes were tempered by a string of concerns. With so many concerns, the network’s sales department felt compelled to scale back the ratings guarantee it offered to advertisers. The Games have drawn an average audience of about 30 million a night on NBC itself, 30 million unique visitors to NBC’s Olympics Web site, 6.3 million shared videos from the coverage streamed on the site and an ultimate profit that network executives project will surpass $100 million.
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Report: Media Companies Joining YouTube and Profiting
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE
After years of regarding pirated video on YouTube as a threat, some major media companies are having a change of heart, treating it instead as an advertising opportunity. In the last few months, CBS, Universal Music, Lionsgate, Electronic Arts and other companies have stopped prodding YouTube to remove unauthorized clips of their movies, music videos and other content and started selling advertising against them.CBS may be the most surprising new business partner in that its sister company, Viacom, is still pursuing its acrimonious billion-dollar copyright lawsuit against YouTube’s owner, Google.
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Google Quietly Launches AdSense for Feeds
CNET
Bits and pieces of Google’s acquisition of FeedBurner continue to seep out. Friday marked the quiet “public” launch of AdSense for Feeds, a service that was soft-launched to a small group of AdSense users back in May. Once integrated into publishers’ RSS feeds, it’ll serve up contextually-related advertising based around the content, helping publishers make money off the growing number of users accessing their site through RSS readers instead of the site where page and ad views have been factors in revenue.
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True Games Interactive Sells Majority Stake to India’s UTV
PAIDCONTENT
True Games Interactive, an Orange Country, CA-based online multiplayer game developer, has sold an 80 percent majority stake to Indian media conglomerate UTV Software Communications. The acquisition has been done through its UK-based subsidiary IG Interactive Entertainment, the company announced. True Games was founded earlier this year, and plans to release its first title in the beginning of 2009.
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Replay Solutions, Testing Automation for Software Development, Raises $11 Million
PRIVATE EQUITY HUB
Replay Solutions, a Redwood City, Calif based provider of testing automation solutions for software development, has raised just over $11 million in Series B funding, according to a regulatory filing. Sigma Partners was joined by return backers Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Partech International. The company previously raised a $4.12 million Series A round.
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Ipanema Tech, Provider of Application Traffic Management, Raises $7 Million
PRIVATE EQUITY HUB
Ipanema Technologies, a France-based provider of application traffic management systems for wide area networks, has raised $7 million in new VC funding from London-based Noble Venture. For the last three years Ipanema technologies enjoyed 60% annual growth. Ipanema’s unique approach to intelligent visibility, intelligent optimization and intelligent acceleration ensures a better and constant alignment of business processes and IT, especially in the new world of dynamic IT, where requirements change rapidly.
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Envysion, Provider of Mangaged Video-as-a-Service, Raises $3 Million
PRIVATE EQUITY HUB
Envysion Inc., a Louisville, Colo.-based provider of managed video-as-a-service, has raised $3 million in third-round funding. Columbia Partners led the round, and was joined by return backers like High Country Ventures and Bear Equity. Highlighting Envysion’s innovation and growth, the Boulder County Business Report honored Envysion with its IQ Award, recognizing it as one of the area’s most innovative companies.
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