In This Update:
• Palm Pre: Palm Unveils New Touch-Screen Smart Phone
• CES: Ford to Enhance Sync with ‘Apps’ and Avatars
• Yahoo Nears End of Search for a CEO
• CES: Mattel Revamps Web Sites and Launches Digital Toys
• Qualcomm Brings Mobile TV to 100 New Markets
• Change Chrome’s Channel to Get Beta Features
• TiVo Googlizes the Television
• Fox Mobile Delays New U.S. Branding Initiative, Blames Economy
• Salesforce Links Force.com to Google App Engine
• Facebook Tells Meebo to Rework Chat Integration
• Netseer Raises $8.1 Million for Ad Targeting Beyond Keywords
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Palm Pre: Palm Unveils New Touch-Screen Smart Phone
HUFFINGTON POST
The device comes with Palm’s new operating system, Palm webOS, which the company also debuted Thursday. It is meant to connect various applications, for example, it will automatically synchronize contacts stored in Facebook, Gmail and Outlook, strip out duplicates and present the information in a master list. In addition to the Pre and the new operating system, Palm showed off a unique accessory on Thursday, a wireless charger for the Pre called the Touchstone. When a Pre is placed on top of it, the gadget powers the phone through induction. The Pre looks similar to the iPhone, with a face dominated mostly by a 3.1-inch touch screen and single button.
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CES: Ford to Enhance Sync with ‘Apps’ and Avatars
SEATTLE TIMES
The Sync in-vehicle information and entertainment is one thing that’s gone right for Ford as automakers have struggled mightily with the recession. The latest version of Sync builds on the hands-free phone and media player functions of the original, introduced in 2007. Ford later added 911 assistance, crash notifications and vehicle health reports. The company is rolling out a third generation of Sync, and a number of Puget Sound area companies have a hand in the effort — Microsoft foremost among them. Ford CEO Alan Mulally, is set to address a modest crowd at the International Consumer Electronics Show this afternoon.
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Yahoo Nears End of Search for a CEO
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Yahoo Inc. is in the final stretch of its search for a chief executive officer, and a decision could come as soon as next week, said people close to the Internet company.Among candidates still under consideration is Carol Bartz, the former chief executive officer of Autodesk Inc., a publicly traded company that builds design software used in engineering. She’s “on the list,” said a person familiar with the matter, adding that she has impressed the Yahoo directors she has met so far.
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CES: Mattel Revamps Web Sites and Launches Digital Toys
VENTUREBEAT
Digital toys and web sites for kids have had a mixed history. But the future is so full of techno-savvy kids that toy makers are finding they have no choice but to move into the digital realm by providing better online entertainment as well as digital toys in the physical world. Mattel is going to do that by making its first full-scale appearance on the show floor of the International Consumer Electronics Show, which features a Kids@Play Summit this week in Las Vegas. Among the moves Mattel is announcing is a complete revamping of its online strategy, which will now target everyone from small kids to adults to bring out the “kid in all of us.”
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Qualcomm Brings Mobile TV to 100 New Markets
GIGAOM
After spectrum is freed up by the transition to digital television in mid-February, mobile TV based on Qualcomm’s MediaFLO technology will be available in 100 new markets, a dramatic expansion from the 63 available today. Sure, some of the markets are second-tier, but major ones getting coverage include San Francisco, Boston, Miami and Houston. Of course, coverage for more than 200 million people (up from 140 million!) doesn’t necessarily translate into subscribers. Qualcomm declines to give numbers, but with two carriers (AT&T and Verizon), a price tag of $15 per month and only six MediaFLO enabled handsets available, I tend to believe the comScore data, which shows that few people are watching broadcast mobile television.
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Change Chrome’s Channel to Get Beta Features
VENTURE BEAT
Specifically, Chrome will have a “Stable channel” for everyday users, a “Beta channel” for users who want to try out new but incomplete features and a “Developer preview channel” for those who want to try out really new ideas, some of which may not be fleshed out much at all. If you want to go beyond the Stable channel, which all Chrome users are on by default, you have to run a program called Google Chrome Channel Changer. A lot of other web browsers do feature previews. For example, many users of Apple’s Safari web browser download the Webkit nightly builds, which are essentially test versions of the browser. And Firefox routinely has beta versions of its browser. But the idea of channels seems like the most user-friendly way to test beta features yet.
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TiVo Googlizes the Television
NEW YORK TIMES
TiVo, the dogged next-generation television company, appears to be striking a blow for youthful insouciance here at C.E.S. Roving bands of bathing-suit wearing teenagers are walking around wearing TiVo tattoos, carrying surfboards and messages that read “Channel surfing is dead.” The gimmick is designed to promote what seems at first like a fairly routine new feature: search. The redesigned search feature in TiVo Series 3 and TiVo HD boxes uses the overall popularity of shows to help people find the programs they are looking for. So, for example, if a user starts typing the letters HE into the redesigned search box on TiVo, the popular show Heroes will likely come up first.
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Fox Mobile Delays New U.S. Branding Initiative, Blames Economy
PAIDCONTENT
News Corp. announced in October that it was overhauling its mobile division after buying the remaining 49 percent state in Jamba from VeriSign. As part of the restructuring, News Corp. created the Fox Mobile Group, and planned aggressive new initiatives, including a new U.S. brand that was on target to go live in the next couple months. But today at CES in Las Vegas, Mauro Montanaro, Fox Mobile’s CEO and former Jamba CEO, said the launch has been delayed because of the economic climate.
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Salesforce Links Force.com to Google App Engine
NETWORK WORLD
Force.com provides a database, Java-like programming language, integration and workflow capabilities, and user-interface design tools for creating business applications that run on Salesforce’s cloud infrastructure. Google’s App Engine, which is still in preview mode, is aimed at developers who want to quickly and easily build scalable Web applications, while AWS is positioned as a more generalized, flexible infrastructure platform for serving all types of programs. The news, which Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is expected to discuss during a company event in New York, follows Salesforce’s recent announcement of a similar arrangement with Amazon Web Services’ Elastic Compute Cloud and Simple Storage Service.
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Facebook Tells Meebo to Rework Chat Integration
WEBWARE
Facebook has instructed Meebo to temporarily take down its newly implemented Facebook Chat integration. According to Meebo, Facebook would like them to, “…connect to their network in a different way.” Facebook has committed developers from Chat and Facebook Connect to help Meebo get Facebook Chat up and working on the service again. To be clear, Facebook is in no way discouraging Meebo from integrating Facebook Chat into its service; it’s just asking Meebo to hook-in through a new and most likely more secure method.
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Netseer Raises $8.1 Million for Ad Targeting Beyond Keywords
VENTUREBEAT
Netseer, a company that targets ads based on intuitive relationships between keywords, has brought in an $8.1 million tranche of an expected $14.1 million round of funding from Mission Ventures and ONSET Ventures. The Los Angeles company hasn’t disclosed its plans for the new money. As an example of what Netseer does, VentureWire says its algorithms would be capable of targeting ads for sites mentioning both Cuban cigars and cognac – two things that happily go together but aren’t usually related in the context of search.
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