In This Update:
• Reuters and International Herald Tribune in Business News Deal
• LinkedIn Courts Developers, Lands BusinessWeek Deal
• Imeem Signs Universal for Ad-Based Free Music
• AT&T to Buy Core Routers from Cisco
• Disney Invests $6 Million Series B in Content Distribution Network EdgeCast
• Catcher Buys Outdoor WiFi’s Vivato
• India’s Ybrant Pays $13 Million For Israeli Online Ad Network Oridian
• MSN Introduces Advertising On Mobile Portal
• Toshiba Enters Solid-State with 128GB Drive
• French Mobile Media’s Streamezzo Raises $22 Million For International Growth
• British Spectrum Auction Set For Next Year
• Nokia Sees HD Video on Cellphones in a Few Years
Reuters and International Herald Tribune in Business News Deal
FINANCIAL TIMES
Reuters and the International Herald Tribune on Monday said they had agreed to collaborate over business coverage in a deal that could lead to further partnerships between the two media groups. From January 7 next year, IHT will carry a Business with Reuters section in its newspaper while the business pages of its website will be co-branded with Reuters and feature blogs, videos and interactive tools. As a result, IHT, which is part of the New York Times group, said it would terminate its agreement with Bloomberg at the end of this year, including Marketplace by Bloomberg and Business Asia by Bloomberg.
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LinkedIn Courts Developers, Lands BusinessWeek Deal
REUTERS
LinkedIn, an Internet social network for professionals, will open up its service on Monday to outside software developers, starting with BusinessWeek magazine, to transform itself from an online contacts and referral database into an indispensable daily tool for business users. It now aims to court developers through its Intelligent Applications platform program. The program will let outside developers create software for LinkedIn as well as embed features of LinkedIn, such as finding your business contacts, directly from partner Web sites.
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Imeem Signs Universal for Ad-Based Free Music
RED ORBIT
Social network imeem on Monday revealed that it has struck a deal with Universal Music Group that will see the music label’s catalog reach the site. The agreement will let users stream both songs and music videos from imeem’s pages for free by running ads alongside the content while also permitting users to upload tracks of their own. This marks the availability of all four major labels on the site and promises that users can join a social network based around music while knowing that the majority of content is legal.
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AT&T to Buy Core Routers from Cisco
REUTERS
Top U.S. phone company AT&T Inc said on Monday it was buying core routers from Cisco Systems Inc to upgrade its Internet backbone network, a major win for Cisco amid competition from rival network equipment maker Juniper Networks Inc.The companies did not reveal the price and size of the order for Cisco’s CRS-1 core routers, but AT&T said it plans to connect Internet hubs in 25 major U.S. cities with the upgraded network in the coming months.
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Disney Invests $6 Million Series B in Content Distribution Network EdgeCast
PAIDCONTENT
EdgeCast Networks, the rich media content delivery network (CDN), today announced that it has secured $6 million in Series B financing led by Steamboat Ventures, a venture capital firm affiliated with The Walt Disney Company. Concurrent with this investment, Scott Hilleboe, Senior Principal of Steamboat Ventures, and Jeffrey Stibel, President of Website Pros, Inc. and former CEO of Web.com, will join EdgeCast’s board of directors. Steamboat will join Series A investors from the Hollywood media community such as Mark Amin, Chairman of CinemaNow as well as Jon Feltheimer, CEO of Lionsgate films. The new funds will be used to expand EdgeCast’s international reach, scale the network for additional capacity, enhance features, and further develop the company’s sales and marketing operations. The latest round brings EdgeCast’s total funding to more than $10 million.
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Catcher Buys Outdoor WiFi’s Vivato
ALARM:CLOCK
Spokane, WA-based Vivato says today that it has been bought by the Catcher Holdings (OTC Bulletin Board: CTHH). Catcher is paying 2.5M shares of Catcher’s common stock (they are currently trading at around $0.75 per share). Vivato makes boxes that will provide you with WiFi base stations which provide up to 2.5 miles of coverage outdoors as well as Micro and Pico Cells used to fill coverage gaps. Vivato has been one of the largest investment vehicles in the Wi-Fi space with well over $60 Million raised. In June 2006, investors bought out the assets for the former Vivato.
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India’s Ybrant Pays $13 Million For Israeli Online Ad Network Oridian
ADOTAS
Ybrant Technologies today announced its intention to acquire Oridian, the online media solutions provider. Terms of the deal were undisclosed. Oridian is a leading online advertising company, lifting both advertisers and publishers to new heights. With over 9 billion worldwide monthly impressions, Oridian enables Advertisers to implement branding as well as direct response campaigns, and Publishers to monetize traffic emanating from all over the world. Oridian is on track to do a top line of more than $ 20 million this year.
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MSN Introduces Advertising On Mobile Portal
SEARCHENGINELAND
Not long ago Microsoft’s MSN relaunched its WAP portal. Today the company is introducing display advertising (graphical and text ads) to MSN Mobile in the US market. (Mobile display advertising is already present on MSN in Belgium, France, Japan, Spain and the UK.). Inaugural advertisers include Bank of America, Ford (Jaguar) and Viacom (Paramount). The technology behind the ads is from mobile ad platform ScreenTonic SA, which Microsoft acquired earlier this year.
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Toshiba Enters Solid-State with 128GB Drive
ELECTRONISTA
Toshiba started its week with the introduction of its first solid-state disks in its 1.8-inch HDD range. Designed to replace conventional rotating storage, the drives are said to offer the storage of a multi-level cell flash device with the speed of simpler single-level cell technology: an advanced controller lets it read at 100MB per second, write at 40MB per second, and yet hold 128GB of storage in such a small size, the company says. In combination with a 56-nanometer manufacturing process, this helps the drive speed up response times and extend battery life while still providing the storage of a conventional disk.
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French Mobile Media’s Streamezzo Raises $22 Million For International Growth
MOCONEWS
French rich mobile media platform vendor Streamezzo has attracted a 15 million euro ($22 million) latest funding round from previous investors Sofinnova, Aza, T-Source, Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) and NTEC. The money will be used to fund “organic growth in international markets”, said CEO Alain Blacquart. Streamezzo has rich media client/server software, a mobile multimedia authoring package called Workbench and a system to push out mobile TV in its product lineup. It will soon develop its services for iPhone and Android, NetEco’s report says. Streamezzo raised an 11 million euro ($16 million) second round in April 206.
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British Spectrum Auction Set For Next Year
TECH.CO.UK
Government media and telecoms regulator Ofcom said it plans to sell off the radio spectrum needed from spring next year, despite public apathy and a lamentable effort by the HDforAll campaign to secure the spectrum for terrestrial HDTV broadcasts. The 1452MHz to 1492MHz radio spectrum is being freed up by the transition from analogue to digital switchover.
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Nokia Sees HD Video on Cellphones in a Few Years
REUTERS via YAHOO
Video recording on cellphones is set to reach high definition (HD) quality in a few years’ time, an executive at the world’s top cellphone maker Nokia (NOK1V.HE) said on Wednesday. “It’s coming. Technically, we are a couple of years away,” Nokia’s Chief Technology Officer Tero Ojanpera told Reuters in an interview. “It’s still a few years away.” Cellphones have had cameras, and the ability to use them as camcorders, for more than five years, but only this year did Nokia start to sell a model, the N95, which records television quality video.
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Tags: Brand, Cisco, Disney, EdgeCast, Financing, IAC, Imeem, Intel, iPhone, ISP, LinkedIn, Microsoft, MSN, Music, Nokia, Series A, Toshiba, U.S., Universal Music Group, Venture Capital, Video, Wi-Fi, Yahoo, Ybrant