In This Update:
• Macrovision Sells off TV Guide Network For Up To $300 Million
• 100 top sites for the year ahead
• Microsoft Patches Critical IE Bug with Emergency Update
• 12seconds.tv Rolls into Public Beta, Launches iPhone Application
• FutureTap Nabs Where to, in First Acquisition of an iPhone Application
• Facebook Growth Explodes, Site Reaches 140 Million Active Users
• Yahoo! To Reduce Retention Policy to 3 Months
• Level 3 Has the Largest IP Network
• Amazon’s IMDB Acquires Box Office Mojo; Will Add Box Office Data To Service
• Medicare to Pay Doctors to Embrace E-prescribing
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Macrovision Sells off TV Guide Network For Up To $300 Million
PAIDCONTENT
Macrovision is almost done with most of its dispositions, and after selling off its TV Guide magazine for $1 to OpenGate Capital, is getting considerably more for the namesake TV network and the online part: it has sold off TV Guide Network to Allen Shapiro and One Equity Partners for about $255 million, plus up to an additional $45 million earnout payable through 2012. The surprise part: after professing love for TVGuide.com network (which includes jumptheshark.com, tv-now.com, tvshowsondvd.com and fansofrealitytv.com) for the last couple of quarters, it is now washing its hands off it, and bundled it as part of this TV network sale. The deal is expected to close on April 1 next year.
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100 top sites for the year ahead
GUARDIAN
The biggest changes since 2006 have been in the fields of collaborative online services that let people in different locations work simultaneously on projects. Collaboration in 2006 was very much focused on words, but now you can create presentations that look as though they were made with expensive packages. And then you can share those presentations, or look at other work that people have done – and even download them. You can convert files without needing expensive systems. Collaborative working has never been easier, even across different platorms. The web really is becoming the operating system, as the rise of the “netbooks” (aka ultraportables, aka Liliputers) emphasises. The growth of location-based services – particularly those which you can choose to log yourself in and out of, thus protecting your privacy – has been rapid.
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Microsoft Patches Critical IE Bug with Emergency Update
COMPUTER WORLD
As it promised yesterday, Microsoft Corp. today issued an emergency patch to plug a critical hole in Internet Explorer (IE) that attackers have been increasingly exploiting from hacked Web sites.
The patch, described in Microsoft’s security bulletin MS08-078, fixes a flaw in the data-binding function of all available versions of the popular browser, including IE5.01, IE6, IE7 and IE8 Beta 2. Microsoft labeled the bug as “critical,” the most serious threat ranking in its four-step scoring system. Today’s update was the second out-of-cycle patch from Microsoft in the past two months.
Researchers unanimously praised Microsoft for putting out the patch as quickly as it did.
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12seconds.tv Rolls into Public Beta, Launches iPhone Application
MOBILE CRUNCH
When we wrote about 12seconds.tv back in July of this year, we called it the “real video Twitter”. Rather than droning on for 19 hours on what they had for lunch, users of 12seconds.tv have – you guessed it – 12 seconds to get their point across on video. Later this morning, 12seconds will be making the transition from invite-only alpha to public beta, opening their registration to all. They are also debuting a brand new iPhone application, which mixes things up a bit to allow users to create new 12seconds posts without violating Apple’s policies against recording video.
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FutureTap Nabs Where to, in First Acquisition of an iPhone Application
VENTURE BEAT
German application company FutureTap has made what it says is the first publicly known acquisition of an iPhone application: It has bought Where To, an app that lets you find points of interest around you using the GPS technology in your iPhone, for $70,000. FutureTap was founded this year with what it says is a mission to create “great” iPhone apps, but founder Ortwin Gentz explains why he decided to buy the application rather than start building his own application from scratch. Basically, development takes longer than most people think, and time-to-market is crucial now that the Holiday season has arrived.
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Facebook Growth Explodes, Site Reaches 140 Million Active Users
READ WRITE WEB
If there’s any doubt that Facebook is rapidly becoming the next big thing in social networks, you only need look at their recent statistics. According to new reports, in recent weeks Facebook is growing at a rate of 600,000 users each day, up from 300,000 to 400,000 users per day earlier this quarter. The company is also reporting that, as of today, they have reached 140 million active users. The new data being reported on Inside Facebook is based on their estimations, and not any actual release from the company. That being said, the Inside Facebook site notes that the 600,000 users per day is only a roundabout number – the true number could possibly be even higher: perhaps even as high as 700,000 users per day.
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Yahoo! To Reduce Retention Policy to 3 Months
UBERGIZMO
Yahoo! is the first search engine to reduce the time it stashes personal data gathered from Web surfing to a mere three months, making it the shortest among its peers. This is a vast difference from its prior standard of 13 months, while retaining the right to keep data for up to half a year if fraud or system security is involved. Three months is pretty short, since Google is currently adopting double the time while Microsoft claims to cut its time to 6 months too if its competitors followed that path. In addition, Yahoo! is working on expanding the scope of the data it is making anonymous, including page and advertisement clicks and views, from just individual search log data only.
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Level 3 Has the Largest IP Network
GIGAOM
Level 3 stock might be trading below a buck, and its future might be cloudy, but the company has to be thrilled with this news from Renesys, an Internet monitoring company, which claims it’s the largest IP network in the world, ahead of Sprint, which apparently just can’t get a break, even though they are growing. Renesys explains that the rise of Level 3 has been driven by its overseas growth, especially in Asia. Global Crossing saw similar gains because of growth in Asia, where it has started to offer transit services to more carriers. As we have noted previously, the growth in traffic in Asia is driven by the surge in the economic activity in the region, along with increased demand for faster broadband pipes.
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Amazon’s IMDB Acquires Box Office Mojo; Will Add Box Office Data To Service
PAIDCONTENT
IMDB, the online movie information and community site owned by Amazon, has done another acquisition: it has bought popular movie data site Box Office Mojo, for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition was completed earlier this summer, and with this, IMDB will add to its relatively sparse box office data figures, and Amazon may also integrate some of IMDB’s film and TV credits data on BOM. BOM, founded in 1999, is a small three person operation HQed in Burbank, and will remain here. IMDB, meanwhile, has been bulking up of late: it bought an indie film movie site last year, and has been adding more video to its site since this summer.
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Medicare to Pay Doctors to Embrace E-prescribing
REUTERS
The future has arrived for U.S. doctors when it comes to prescribing medications. Starting next month, Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the elderly and disabled, will offer financial bonuses to doctors who prescribe drugs electronically rather than on paper. Doctors who do not will face penalties from Medicare starting in 2012. This is intended to help persuade the vast majority of U.S. doctors who do not “e-prescribe” to start, both to improve efficiency and curb medical errors. Proponents say that when a physician zaps a prescription electronically to a pharmacist rather than scribbling it on a piece of paper, it removes the possibility a patient might get the wrong drug because of a doctor’s sloppy handwriting or a different medication with a similar name.
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