In This Update:
• Macrovision Buying Gemstar-TV Guide for $2.8 Billion
• AdKnowledge Acquires Facebook Advertising Company Cubics
• JetBlue, Yahoo, RIM to Offer Free In-Flight Wi-Fi
• AVG Technologies Buys Web Protection Vendor Exploit Prevention Labs
• Cablevision Files to Bid in 700-MHz Auction
• IBM Reveals Core-to-Core Optical Dream in Progress
• Report : Apple Now Up to $15 Billion in Cash Reserves
• Disney and Adobe Back Chinese Video-Sharing Site 56.com
• Mozilla Expands in China, Inks Agreement with Baidu
• First Wideband Modems Could Be $100
• Postal Service Surcharge Could Slash Netflix Profit
• Samsung to Roll Out 1.3 Inch Hard Drives
• MovieBeam to Shut Down on December 15
• Apple Patent Details Multitasking Touch-Screen for Mobile Gaming
• Nabbr Secures Third Round Funding For Music Widget Marketing
• Email Tracking Startup Fyreball Raises $1 Million

Macrovision Buying Gemstar-TV Guide for $2.8 Billion
PAIDCONTENT
Content protection firm Macrovision (NSDQ: MVSN) is acquiring Gemstar-TV Guide for $2.8 billion in cash and stock. The companies say there will be opportunities to combine Gemstar’s guide services with Macrovision’s own distribution and delivery technology. The deal calls for Gemstar-TV Guide shareholders to receive $6.35 per share in cash, a 6 percent premium over Thursday’s closing price. The release notes, however, that the offering price represents a 29 percent premium over Gemstar’s share price in July, when it announced it would review strategic alternatives including a possible sale. That decision came with the blessing of News Corp., (NYSE: NWS) a 41 percent owner of the company. The whole deal is being couched in the language of openness and consumer freedom: Combining Macrovision’s and Gemstar-TV Guide’s solution portfolios will enable extensive libraries of commercial and personal protected content to be accessible on numerous devices through simple and intuitive guides… Macrovision’s and Gemstar-TV Guide’s strategic objectives have been to build and integrate open technology, content protection and distribution offerings that enable the delivery of digital media to consumers across multiple platforms and channels.
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AdKnowledge Acquires Facebook Advertising Company Cubics
CENTERNETWORKS
Adknowledge announced today it has acquired Cubics, the first online advertising network created to focus on the Facebook developer community. Cubics represents the ad inventory on over 500 application developers. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. “The acquisition of Cubics gives us an incredible footprint within the social media space,” said Scott Lynn, CEO of Adknowledge. “The network is less than a year old and has already grown to over a billion impressions a month. By leveraging our international sales teams and targeting technologies, we intend to help Cubics remain the leader in the social advertising space.” Other players we’ve reviewed in the Facebook ad market include: Federated Media, Lookery, AceBucks and VideoEgg.
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JetBlue, Yahoo, RIM to Offer Free In-Flight Wi-Fi
REUTERS
JetBlue, Yahoo Inc and Research in Motion plan to offer free, in-flight, Wi-Fi web connections for laptop computers and advanced cell phones, Rim said on Thursday. The service will allow passengers to access customized Yahoo mail and Yahoo instant messenger services on their laptops or to access corporate e-mails on Wi-Fi enabled versions of the popular Blackberry device from Rim. According to a spokesperson for Rim the first JetBlue flight offering the service will be on December 11.
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AVG Technologies Buys Web Protection Vendor Exploit Prevention Labs
VNUNET
Security vendor AVG Technologies has acquired internet protection vendor Exploit Prevention Labs. AVG was acquired by anti-virus vendor Grisoft in August this year (CRN, 24 August), and the combined company was rebranded AVG Technologies. Roger Thompson, co-founder and chief technology officer of Exploit Prevention Labs, said: “Exploit’s software blocks dangerous downloads on websites and addresses drive-by attacks. “AVG is leapfrogging the competition with its products at the moment and with 60m users in its client base. Exploit gets to put its software on millions of computers in a shorter time.”
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Cablevision Files to Bid in 700-MHz Auction
MULTICHANNEL NEWS
Cablevision Systems has put in the paperwork to bid in the Federal Communications Commission’s 700-Megahertz auction in January, representing the second cable operator besides Cox Communications that could pick up some wireless spectrum. “We have filed the necessary forms to reserve our right to participate in the auction if we choose to,” Cablevision spokeswoman Kim Kerns said. Cox confirmed that it plans to bid without partners, while Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Charter Communications said they will not participate. AT&T and Verizon Wireless — the country’s two biggest wireless carriers — will bid, and analysts expect them to be particularly aggressive. Analysts speculate that EchoStar Communications will be a bidder as well; the company declined to comment.
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IBM Reveals Core-to-Core Optical Dream in Progress
ARS TECHNICA
IBM scientists announced a breakthrough that they claim could one day lead to a completely new way of handling communication between multiple CPU cores on a single die. IBM researchers have created a modulator that’s one hundred to a thousand times smaller than other prior modulators and is theoretically capable of using light pulses to transmit data between cores, rather than relying on traditional wires. Most reports have heralded this development as paving the way for supercomputers on a single chip, but at present, the technology is too big and has no supporting on-chip light source. That said, the long-term potential for such a technology is good. Chip-level optical routing would allow cores to communicate much faster than even the best wired connection (IBM estimates its nanophotonic technology would be 100 times faster) and would almost certainly eliminate any bandwidth-related bottlenecks within a single core.
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Report : Apple Now Up to $15 Billion in Cash Reserves
FORTUNE
According to regulatory filings, Apple now has $15.4 billion in cash reserves, putting the iPod maker in the elite ranks of well-heeled Fortune 500 tech companies. (Only Microsoft (MSFT) and Cisco Systems (CSCO) stockpile more.) And lately the stacks have been rising fast; Apple has added $5 billion to its coffers in the past year alone, according to regulatory filings. Unlike Microsoft or Cisco though, Apple (AAPL) doesn’t pay a dividend, doesn’t make big acquisitions, and doesn’t buy back many shares. Last month the company reported that since 1999, it has spent a relatively paltry $217 million to repurchase stock, though its board has authorized $500 million for that purpose. When asked about Apple’s plans for the cash, a spokeswoman referred to chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer’s statements earlier this year. When a Lehman Brothers analyst asked him where the money would go, Oppenheimer didn’t offer specifics beyond saying that having a few billion on hand helps to fund big projects, and “we do discuss share buyback and other forms of returning cash to the shareholders with the board from time to time.”
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Disney and Adobe Back Chinese Video-Sharing Site 56.com
PULSE2.0
56.com a Chinese video start-up company has raised $10 million in funding from Steamboat Ventures. Steamboat is the funding company subsidiary of The Wall Disney Company. 56.com will use the funding to upgrade hardware, add new features, and increase marketing efforts. Steamboat Ventures previously invested in UUsee.com, a Chinese P2P video website. The funding provided to 56.com and UUsee.com validates Steamboat’s interest in Chinese video companies.
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Mozilla Expands in China, Inks Agreement with Baidu
ARS TECHNICA
Mozilla Online, the Chinese subsidiary of the Mozilla Corporation, has announced a deal with Chinese search engine giant Baidu. The deal guarantees that access to the Baidu search engine will continue to be made available in all Chinese editions of Firefox directly through the browser’s built-in search interface. The financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed. Baidu has been included in the list of search plug-ins installed with Chinese editions of Firefox since the release of Firefox 2 (if not earlier) but this is the first time that a formal partnership has existed between the search company and Mozilla.
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First Wideband Modems Could Be $100
MULTICHANNEL NEWS
The first wave of cable’s next-generation cable modems, which promise downloads up to 160 megabits per second, are currently in the middle of certification testing by CableLabs and should be ready for early deployments in 2008. But as the ship dates near for the initial modems that use CableLabs’ Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification 3.0, it’s becoming clearer that DOCSIS 3.0 modems will be more expensive than perhaps previously anticipated. John Sweeney, Scientific Atlanta director of product strategy and management, estimated that the street price of a 3.0 modem will be around $100, adding that quantity has a large effect on the per-unit price. Current DOCSIS 2.0 modems cost an average of $65 to $70, according to research firm In-Stat. “It’s not the $10-to-$20 delta [between 2.0 and 3.0] the cable operators were encouraging the industry to hit,” Sweeney said.
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Postal Service Surcharge Could Slash Netflix Profit
BLOOMBERG via BOSTON.COM
Netflix Inc., the largest US mail-order movie-rental service, may suufer a cut in profit if the US Postal Service starts charging extra to manually sort the envelopes that carry its DVDs, a Citigroup Inc. analyst said. An audit prepared by the Postal Service’s Inspector General last month recommended charging one unidentified company 17 cents per envelope for labor costs. Citigroup analyst Tony Wible, who said in a note to investors Tuesday that the company is Netflix, estimated the charge might reduce profit per subscriber to 35 cents from $1.05. Mailers from Blockbuster Inc., the world’s largest video-rental chain, aren’t handled the same way, Wible said. He advises investors to buy Blockbuster shares. A Blockbuster spokesman didn’t respond to a phone message seeking comment. Netflix saves the postal service $100 million annually because it pays the first-class postage rate both ways even though the company picks up returned mail at the post office, Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey said. Netflix ships about 1.6 million DVDs a day.
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Samsung to Roll Out 1.3 Inch Hard Drives
GEARLOG
In an email announcing its CES meeting plans, Samsung Semiconductor said that the company will at least talk about the world’s first 1.3-inch hard drive at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. The drive is being targeted at “mobile consumer devices”. This might not be Samsung’s flagship product for CES, but the product is an interesting choice, given that Samsung is also among the world leaders in NAND flash memory — the preferred storage medium in devices like the iPod nano. Samsung also says that its 32 Gbit NAND devices will enter mass production soon.
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MovieBeam to Shut Down on December 15
BETANEWS
One of the first online movie download services is calling it quits after failing to make its business model work despite over $100 million in funding. It hasn’t even been a year since MovieBeam was sold by Disney to Hollywood Video owner Movie Gallery, but the service told customers this week that it will shut its doors on December 15. Some newer customers will be eligible for a refund on the hardware. Movie Gallery spent less than $10 million buying MovieBeam, a fraction of the $50 million it was recapitalized with last year after Disney spent a reported $70 million on the project. But this service has failed to achieve any critical mass, largely due to its high cost and unique delivery method that limited its ability to expand. MovieBeam receives the content over the air with an antenna connected to a set-top box. A phone line is also required for billing and ordering purposes. Customers have to shell out $250 for the set-top box (although pricing has dropped to $100 with promotions) and pay a $30 activation fee. Pricing for movies ranges from $3.99 to $1.99 USD, with a $1 surcharge for high-definition content.
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Apple Patent Details Multitasking Touch-Screen for Mobile Gaming
APPLE INSIDER
Apple Inc. in a new patent filing details multitasking input techniques that would allow iPod or iPhone users to play interactive gaming titles on their device’s touch-screen while at the same time maintaining control of a secondary application from the touch-screen, such as digital music player application. The 29-page filing, originally made September 11th of last year, is credited to five of the Cupertino-based company’s engineers and is title “Techniques for interactive input to portable electronic devices.” More specifically, it pertains to touch-pads or touch-screens on a mobile device that can determine which application should receive input based on the manner in which the user entered the input.
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Nabbr Secures Third Round Funding For Music Widget Marketing
HYPERBOT
Widget promotion network Nabbr has announced agreements with all four major record labels, to launch the Nabbr New Music Player. Each week 10 videos will be featured, allowing the 41 million monthly visitors to Nabbr’s network of 180 sites to embed a video’s individual widget or the entire program into their social network profiles. This week the company closed a third round of undisclosed funding led by Allen & Co. S-Curve Records and label founder Steve Greenberg sits as Nabbr’s Board Chairman. Newer supporters include Michael Wolfson, formerly of AOL and founder/CEO of Rocket Fuel; former Paramount Pictures CEO Jonathan Dolgen, president of Phoenix Pictures Arnold Messer; PrimaryWave Music Publishing founder Larry Mestel and former President of MDC Partners Steven Berns.
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Email Tracking Startup Fyreball Raises $1 Million
SEATTLE P-I
Pete Parsons, the former general manager at Bungie Studios, maker of the popular “Halo” game franchise, has landed about $1 million in angel financing for a new Bellevue startup called Fyreball. Parsons, who left Bungie earlier this year and founded Fyreball in March, isn’t saying much about the product direction of the startup. But the 42-year-old did confirm that it is building an alternative to e-mail that allows users to track messages and discussions as they circulate around the Web. That means a Fyreball user could trace who viewed, commented on or forwarded a funny video, a scientific report or other digital content.
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Tags: AdKnowledge, Adobe, AOL, Apple, AVG Technologies, Blackberry, Boston, Brand, Cable Vision, Cisco, EchoStar, EMI, Facebook, Financing, Fox, Fyreball, Halo, IBM, iPhone, IPO, JetBlue, Mac, Microsoft, Music, Nabbr, P2P, Research In Motion, RIM, Seattle, Time Warner, Turn, VC, Verizon, Video, widget, Yahoo