In This Update:
• Board Ties at Apple and Google Are Scrutinized
• Sprint Posts Larger Loss
• IBM Picks Up Data Analytics Company Exeros
• Gist Adds $6.75 Million Series A VC Funding
• Urbanspoon Bought by IAC, Will Remain Independent Brand
• The Big-Screen Kindle: It’s About Textbooks, Not Saving the Newspapers
• BlackBerry Curve Outsells the iPhone 3G
• SpringSource Acquires Open Source Application Management Company
• AOL’s Socialthing And Warner Bros. TV Group Get Connected

Sponsored by:
McCarter & English, LLP
The law firm of new media. Major offices in New York, Boston, Newark, Stamford, and other cities. Advising new media companies from start-up to exit. Venture capital, IP protections and disputes, employment matters, outsourcing, joint ventures, acquisitions, to name just a few. Contact

Board Ties at Apple and Google Are Scrutinized
NEW YORK TIMES
The Federal Trade Commission has begun an inquiry into whether the close ties between the boards of two of technology’s most prominent companies, Apple and Google, amount to a violation of antitrust laws, according to several people briefed on the inquiry. Apple and Google share two directors, Eric E. Schmidt, chief executive of Google, and Arthur Levinson, former chief executive of Genentech. The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 prohibits a person’s presence on the board of two rival companies when it would reduce competition between them. The two companies increasingly compete in the cellphone and operating systems markets.
Source>

Sprint Posts Larger Loss
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Sprint Nextel Corp. posted a larger first-quarter loss as it booked restructuring charges and continued to shed wireless customers. Sprint lost 1.3 million long-term contract subscribers in the first quarter, offsetting a surge in customers who don’t sign contracts and prepay for their wireless minutes. Many were attracted by the company’s Boost Mobile unlimited plan, which costs $50 a month. Chief Executive Dan Hesse said business shutdowns and layoffs accounted for much of the contract-subscriber losses, bringing the total number of such customers lost to more than six million since the fall of 2007.
Source>

IBM Picks Up Data Analytics Company Exeros
CNET
IBM on Tuesday said it acquired Exeros, a privately held data discovery software maker. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. IBM said it will wrap Exeros’ technology into its recently launched business analytics unit. Exeros’ technology uncovers relationships between databases and allows companies to decipher disparate information sources. In a statement, IBM walked through various scenarios for Exeros’ software. Exeros offers Discover X-Profiler, an application that profiles data, Discovery Unified Schema Builder, which allows users to prototype the combination of various data, and the Discovery Transformation Analyzer, which scans business rules and spots anomalies.
Source>

Gist Adds $6.75 Million Series A VC Funding
CENTER NETWORKS
Seattle-based Gist has announced it has closed a $6.75 million Series A round of funding led by Foundry Group with participation by its founding investor Vulcan Capital. Gist’s goal is to help reduce information overload by creating a dashboard that brings all of your information together and organizes it for the best possible effectiveness. Gist is currently in private beta and integrates with Outlook and Gmail. The company notes they also integrate information from LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Brad Feld will join the board and the company currently employs 10 people.
Source>

Urbanspoon Bought by IAC, Will Remain Independent Brand
XCONOMY
It’s an acquisition that is truly surprising to no one, but now it’s official: Seattle-based Urbanspoon, the online restaurant guide, has been bought by New York-based IAC for an undisclosed amount. Urbanspoon will stay an independent brand based in Seattle, and will report to Jay Herratti, who heads up some of IAC’s most prominent Internet brands like Citysearch, InsiderPages, and Evite. IAC has a market cap of $2.4 billion and owns dozens of popular sites, so its resources should come in handy. The deal closed on February 13, but was kept tightly under wraps.
Source>

The Big-Screen Kindle: It’s About Textbooks, Not Saving the Newspapers
READ WRITE WEB
According to a number of well-substantiated rumors, Amazon is set to debut a new, large-screen version of its Kindle eBook reader on Wednesday morning during a press conference at Pace University in New York City. A lot of the current discussion around this announcement has focused on how a new Kindle might or might not be able to save the ailing newspaper industry, but in many respects, it seems more likely that Amazon is simply planning to turn Kindle into a better platform for electronic textbooks.
Source>

BlackBerry Curve Outsells the iPhone 3G
CNET
The smartphone sales race may be closer than expected. Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Curve overtook Apple’s iPhone to become the top-selling consumer smartphone in the United States during the first quarter of 2009, according to research published by NPD Group on Monday. NPD’s monthly “Smartphone Market Update” report, based on online surveys of consumers, now ranks the best-selling consumer smartphones in the U.S. as follows: RIM BlackBerry Curve, Apple iPhone 3G and RIM BlackBerry Storm.
Source>

SpringSource Acquires Open Source Application Management Company
ALARM CLOCK
SpringSource scooped up Hyperic today, thus securing its competitiveness in the enterprise application sector. The deal that finalized late last week has employees at both firms optimistic of what is to come. Hyperic first made news when the firm won its second round of funding back in 2007, then again in 2008 with its release of CloudStatus.com. Based in San Francisco, the firm holds a client base including Cisco, Microsoft, CNet, and MySQL. Over the past two years the company has aggressively expanded its open source management software, which has been met by rapid adoption among IT developers and IT operations professionals.
Source>

AOL’s Socialthing And Warner Bros. TV Group Get Connected
PAIDCONTENT
AOL’s promotion of online identities manager Socialthing continues this week by tying it in across corporate sibling Warner Bros. Television Group. The deal also suggests a new closeness with its fellow Time Warner subsidiary, even as the company moves to spin off AOL. In past years, WBTVG and AOL would often downplay any relationship to each other. But as AOL tries to build up its social net tools, alongside its own programming, the Time Warner unit needs all the friends it can get.
Source>

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Event: New York State Bar Association: BLS Technology & Venture Law Committee
May 7, 2009, The Penn Club of New York. Sponsored by MasurLaw (http://www.masurlaw.com).
Progress Partners is speaking at this NYSBA event.

Tags: Amazon, AOL, Apple, Blackberry, Boston, Cisco, CNET, eBook, Facebook, GMail, Google, HBO, IAC, IBM, Informa, iPhone, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Mobile, New York, New York Times, Newspapers, NYT, Open Source, Research In Motion, RIM, San Francisco, Seattle, SEC, Smartphone, Sprint, Time Warner, Twitter, Venture Capital, WSJ