Music Streamer Rdio Lands New Funding

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Los Angeles – Rdio, the cloud-based streaming music service
developed by the creators of Kazaa and Skype, has raised an undisclosed amount
of new funding from Mangrove Capital Partners, Quintura reported, citing a
tweet from Mangrove’s Mark Tluszcz.

Rdio offers a Web-only unlimited music
streaming music service for $4.99, and a version that adds mobile access for $9.99
per month.

The company recently signed a deal to add indie tracks represented
by the Merlin label collective to its service.

 

 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/4ldbqja
(Quintura)

http://twitter.com/marktluszcz/status/30729862306074624

http://rdio.com

LibreDigital Raises $4 Million for Digital Reading Technologies

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Austin, Texas – LibreDigital, a provider of e-book and digital
periodical aggregation and distribution services, announced on Monday that it
has raised $4 million in new funding.

Details on participating investors were
not provided.

Ten-year-old, Austin-based LibreDigital provides e-book
distribution services for publishers on platforms like Apple’s iBookstore, and
those offered by Amazon, Google, Barnes & Noble and Sony.

The company will
use funds for additional product development.

 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/4sp5sd9

http://www.libredigital.com

Head of Emerging Technology at Warner Music Exits

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Los Angeles – Ethan Kaplan, senior vice president of major
record label Warner Music Group’s (NYSE: WMG) emerging technology division, said in a blog
post that he is leaving the company. "When I joined, websites were made
using Flash and a janky CMS that plugged content into it," Kaplan wrote.
"My team and I introduced Drupal, dynamic publishing, community based
websites and ‘experience sites’ like Mission Metallica. We rode the technology
waves from Zune to ringtones, Motorolla to Nokia, iPhone to iPad, MySpace to
Facebook. And now its time to move on."

 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/6fvuh3a
(Blackrimglasses)

Joost Acquires Digital Distribution Rights to "Jackass 3.5"

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Santa Monica, Calif. – Viacom’s (NYSE: VIA) Paramount Digital
Entertainment and MTV said on Friday that Joost has acquired the digital
ad-supported distribution rights to their movie "Jackass 3.5" in
multiple territories. Beginning April 1, the movie will be available online
exclusively at Joost.com in twelve countries, including the U.S., Canada, U.K.,
Australia, Germany, France, Austria, Luxembourg, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland
and Turkey.

 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/4lg8jrh

http://www.joost.com/jackass3.5

HarperCollins Acquires First Novel via Inkpop Teen Writing Site

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

New York – Publisher HarperCollins said on Friday it will
publish "The Carrier of the Mark," the first acquisition from its
inkpop interactive website for teen writing, in the fall of 2011. The company
said inkpop traffic has grown nearly 500% over the past year, with 60,000
projects uploaded to the site.

 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/4uzv5ss

http://www.inkpop.com

Anti-Piracy Firm Says Dozen BitTorrent Sites Taken Offline

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Los Angeles – A dozen BitTorrent file-sharing sites in the
U.S. have been taken offline following actions taken by Dutch anti-piracy firm
BREIN in coordination with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA),
TorrentFreak reported.

The sites in question were not named in a statement from
BREIN.

TorrentFreak, which covers the file-sharing space, said it had received
no reports of outages on any popular file-sharing sites.

"New sites are popping
up, but we take these down faster and faster so they can’t gain an
audience," BREIN head Tim Kuik told TorrentFreak.

"Our goal is to
limit the availability of illegal sites so people rather use legal platforms.
BREIN doesn’t publish any names because some sites relocate and start over
elsewhere."

In November, the U.S. government seized the domains of dozens
of sites accused of piracy, including Torrent-Finder.com.

 

Related Links:
http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-takes-a-dozen-torrent-sites-offline-110127

http://tinyurl.com/4exeav7
(DMW previous coverage)

http://www.anti-piracy.nl/english/english.asp

http://mpaa.org

Ex-WikiLeaks Staffer Debuts OpenLeaks Whistleblower Site

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Davos, Switzerland – A former employee at WikiLeaks on
Friday announced the launch of a new rival service, OpenLeaks, which aims to
differentiate itself by offering sources more options on how their documents
are released, the Associated Press reported.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg reportedly
had a falling out with WikiLeaks head Julian Assange, but told AP the two sites
and other copycats will complement each other and "decentralize"
their work.

The main difference with OpenLeaks is it will not actually publish
any documents itself, leaving the choice up to sources submitting them to determine which media outlets to share them with.

The responsibility of dealing
with government response to leaks, and reviewing documents for redactions will
then be left up to the media organizations.

"We are not going to get under
the same kind of scrutiny from governments and big corporations as WikiLeaks is
currently," Domscheit-Berg told AP.

 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/4uxvvwg
(AP)

http://www.openleaks.org

Microsoft Saw Strong Kinect, Games Sales in Recent Quarter

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Redmond, Wash. – Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) said strong performance at its Entertainment and
Services division — which houses its games unit — helped propel the company
to beat Wall Street analysts’ expectations for its fiscal second quarter
earnings.

The Entertainment and Services division experienced 55% growth during
the quarter. Microsoft sold more than 8 million of its Kinect motion-sensing
game systems in just 60 days, as well as 6.3 million Xbox 360 consoles.

Subscriptions to its Xbox Live online game service also rose 30% over the same
period in 2009.

Overall, Microsoft reported $19.95 billion in revenue on $6.63
billion of net income for the quarter, besting analysts’ estimates of $19.2
billion.

 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/6lf7y3r

Facebook HTTPS

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Facebook Adds Optional Encryption, 'Social Authentification'

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Palo Alto, Calif. – Facebook has added the ability for users
to login and surf the site using a more secure encrypted connection, known as
HTTPS. The encryption is the same used on shopping and banking websites to
secure connections, and was previously used on Facebook when passwords are
checked. "Starting today we’ll provide you with the ability to experience
Facebook entirely over HTTPS. You should consider enabling this option if you
frequently use Facebook from public Internet access points found at coffee
shops, airports, libraries or schools," the company said in a blog post.

Facebook
noted that the site may function more slowly using HTTPS, and some features,
including many third-party applications, don’t currently support HTTPS.

In
addition to the added encryption, Facebook said it will now also offer
"social authentification," a unique form of the traditional
"captcha" that will ask a user to identify Facebook friends from
their photos.

 

 

Related Links:
http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=486790652130

1...1,0421,0431,044...1,457Page 1,043 of 1,457