San Mateo, Calif. – Jelli, the operator of a user-controlled
local FM radio service, on Tuesday released an iPhone application that will let
mobile users vote to control what gets played on FM radio. Jelli users vote for
artists and songs online and via mobile, creating a dynamic playlist heard on
FM radio stations.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/22paxht
Los Angeles – National CineMedia, a provider of digital
programming for movie exhibitors, said on Tuesday that its NCM Fathom unit has
signed a deal to beam three performances by the LA Philharmonic live into U.S.
movie theaters. The concerts, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel from the Walt Disney
Concert Hall, will be available in over 400 theaters.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/2e56kt9
Cambridge, Mass. – Content delivery network services
provider Akamai Technologies (NASD: AKAM) could be in the midst of losing its contract as
the primary service provider for Netflix’s (NASD: NFLX) popular Instant Streaming service,
according to published reports.
Citing unnamed sources, Reuters reported that the
two companies are in talks over pricing issues, and that Akamai could be losing
the engagement to its rivals, Limelight and Level 3.
Netflix spokesman Steve
Swasey denied any dissatisfaction with Akamai in a statement to CNET, adding,
"We continue to engage Akamai as a vendor in our multi-vendor strategy for
the foreseeable future."
Shares in Akamai were down $2.65 at $51.49 near
the close of trading on Tuesday, a loss of nearly 5%.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/26s7gec
(Reuters)
http://tinyurl.com/26trb82
(CNET)
Cambridge, Mass. – The U.S. e-book market will reach $966
million in consumer sales this year, and is set to nearly triple to almost $3
billion by 2015, according to a report from market research firm Forrester
Research.
The firm found that just 7% of online adults who read books currently
read e-books.
Of these, the average e-book reader is consuming 41% of their
books in digital form — despite the fact that nearly half of this number does not yet own an e-book
reader device.
Among U.S. consumers who own an Amazon Kindle or other e-book
reader, 66% of books are read digitally.
"At that size and higher, not
only do publishers need to take digital seriously, they must make it the new
default for publishing, preparing for a day in which physical book publishing
is an adjunct activity that supports the digital publishing business,"
said Forrester’s James McQuivey.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/3y6keub
Los Angeles – IAC/InterActiveCorp.’s (NASD: IACI) Ask.com search engine
unit is laying off 130 employees, mostly engineers who had been working on the
company’s search engine — operation of which Ask.com has now farmed off to
third parties, Bloomberg reported.
Ask.com said it will cease development on
algorithmic web search; recent market research found the company claims less
than 2% of the total U.S. search market.
"This investment in independent
web search is not required by our strategy, nor is it required in the
marketplace," Ask.com president Doug Leeds wrote in a post on the
company’s blog.
"We have access to multiple third party structured and
unstructured data feeds that, when integrated, can provide a web search
experience on par with what we are able to produce internally, at much lower
costs." T
he company will now focus squarely on its questions-and-answers
Web service.
Related Links:
http://blog.ask.com/2010/11/askcom-update.html
http://tinyurl.com/32zk2pf
(Bloomberg)
Los Angeles – Less than a month after a federal court
ordered a halt to distribution of file-sharing software application LimeWire, a
"secret" development team has reengineered the software and released
it back onto the Internet, TorrentFreak reported.
The new LimeWire Pirate
Edition application is based on the LimeWire 5.6 beta released earlier this
year.
A source tells TorrentFreak that, in the new release, "all
dependencies on LimeWire LLC’s servers have been removed, all remote settings
have been disabled, the Ask toolbar has been unbundled, and all features of
LimeWire PRO have been activated for free."
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/25tky6m
(TorrentFreak)
http://tinyurl.com/27tdwzg
(DMW previous coverage)
San Francisco – Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) on Monday released the first
smartphones to run its new Windows Phone 7 software, promoting the launch in
San Francisco with free tickets to a Maroon 5 concert for fans who came down to
an AT&T store and demoed the phone, CNET News.com reported.
As of midday,
however, that store had sold less than half its supply of 20 Windows Phone 7
devices, while around 200 people showed up for the free concert tickets.
Outside of San Francisco, reports from Europe, Australian and
Singapore have indicated stores sold out of their supplies of Windows Phone 7
devices.
Related Links:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-20022137-75.html
Mountain View, Calif. – Google (NASD: GOOG) is launching a new
"Instant Previews" feature on its search results pages, allowing
users to click to see previews of the Web pages listed in search results
without leaving Google. Users can click on a magnifying glass next to the title
of any search result, which will launch a visual overview of the page — with
the portion of the page containing the search terms highlighted.
In its
testing, Google said "people who use Instant Previews are about 5% more
likely to be satisfied with the results they click."
The new feature will begin rolling out to all Google users in the coming days.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/33tbe3m
(Google blog)
