Spring Design Begins Shipping $399 Alex eReader

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Fremont,
Calif. – Spring Design on Wednesday
began shipping its Alex eReader, an Android-based e-book reader device that
costs $399.

The dual-screen device features Wi-Fi connectivity at launch, and
later this year will add support for 3G and EVDO/CDMA. One screen on the device
is the e-book EPD screen, while the other is an LCD that supports video
playback and Web surfing.

Spring Design said it would soon announce
multi-language versions of Alex for countries speaking Chinese, Spanish,
Russian, Korean and Hebrew.

The company partnered with Grammata to sell the
Alex eReader in Spain
online and in retail stores, starting in July.

Grammata is digitizing books
from Spanish publishers and expects to offer 15,000 to 45,000 Spanish-language
e-books for sale.

 

Related Links:
http://www.grammata.es

http://www.springdesign.com

Twitter Counts 105.7 Million Users; Adding 300K Per Day

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
1

San Francisco – Twitter now counts
105,779,710 registered users, and is adding 300,000 new users per day,
TechCrunch reported, citing remarks made by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone at the
company’s Chirp conference in San
Francisco.

Other interesting data shared by Stone
included site traffic — Twitter.com receives 180 million unique visitors per
month, and 75% of this Web traffic comes from outside of Twitter.com.

CEO Evan
Williams also noted that third-party applications are make 3 billion requests a
day through Twitter’s APIs.

 

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/vhids
(TechCrunch)

http://chirp.twitter.com/live.html

Google Introduces Twitter Archive Search

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Mountain View,
Calif. – Google (NASD: GOOG) on Wednesday launched
a new feature that lets users search across the entire archive of tweets sent
by Twitter users.

The tool let users "zoom to any point in time and
‘replay’ what people were saying publicly about a topic on Twitter."

The
results include a chart where users can expand their search to see the volume
of tweets on a specific topic by year, month or day.

Google will roll out the
replay feature globally in English over the next few days.

At launch, the
archive will cover tweets sent as far back as Feb. 11, 2010, but will
everything back to the very first tweet sent on March 21, 2006.

 

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/vhghx
(Google blog)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20002453-265.html

Satellite Radio Firm Sirius XM Reports Subscriber Turnaround

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
3

Washington
– Satellite radio broadcaster Sirius XM (NASD: SIRI) said on Wednesday that it added more
than 171,000 net subscribers during the first quarter, compared with a net
decline of more than 404,000 the prior year.

The Company ended the quarter with
18.9 million subscribers, up nearly 345,000 from the same point in 2009.

"Our subscriber results represent a remarkably positive turn from the year
ago quarter," said Mel Karmazin, the CEO of Sirius XM.

"We also
expect to report solid revenue growth and strong growth in pro forma adjusted
income from operations for the first quarter of 2010."

The news sent
shares of the company up 6% by midday Wednesday.

 

Related Links:
http://investor.sirius.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=458949

Citing U.S. Demand, Apple Delays International iPad Launch

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Cupertino, Calif.
– Apple (NASD:  AAPL) announced on Wednesday that, due to "surprisingly strong U.S.
demand" for its iPad, it has delayed the international launch of the
device by one month to the end of May. The company said it sold more than
500,000 of the devices during its first week on sale, and also has taken a
large number of pre-orders for iPad 3G models for delivery by the end of April.

"We know that many international customers waiting to buy an iPad will be
disappointed by this news, but we hope they will be pleased to learn the reason
— the iPad is a runaway success in the US thus far," the company said
in a statement.

Apple will announce international pricing and begin taking online
pre-orders on May 10.

 

Related Links:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/04/14advisory_ipad.html

Greycroft Raises $130.7M Fund for Digital Media Investments

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

New York
– Greycroft Partners, a venture capital firm focused on digital media
investments, announced on Wednesday that it has closed its second fund,
Greycroft II, at $130.7 million.

The firm was founded in 2006 with a $75
million fund that made 34 investments, typically in sums between $500,000 and $5 million, in early-stage companies.

Past investments have included The Huffington Post; PaidContent parent
company ContentNext Media; Digisynd; Pump Audio; CrowdFusion; and Buzzd.

Partner Ian Sigalow told PaidContent the firm
plans to make 40 investments over the next four to five years with the new
fund.  

 

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/vhfth
(PaidContent)

http://www.greycroftpartners.com

Qualcomm's FLO TV Mobile Service to Allow TV Recording

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Las Vegas
– Wireless developer Qualcomm’s (NASD: QCOM) FLO TV mobile TV unit announced on Tuesday that
the service will soon allow users to time-shift programs, caching them to their
mobile phones for later viewing on-demand, "even outside of a coverage
area." This new feature, along with pay-per-day passes and new interactive
features for its FLO TV programming, are expected to become available in the
second half of 2010.

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/vgsdj

http://snipurl.com/vgs9v
(AP)

Apple Approves Opera Mini Browser for Use on iPhone

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Cupertino,
Calif. – Apple (NASD: AAPL) has approved
Opera’s Mini Web browser for use on its iPhone and iPod touch, which will
compete with the company’s own built-in Safari browser for users. Wired.com
notes that the browser’s added speed come from loading "optimized,
compressed" versions of Web pages from Opera’s own servers, which are
"encoded in a special markup language and compressed to as little as 10
percent of the original data footprint."


 

Related Links:
http://itunes.apple.com/app/opera-mini-web-browser/id363729560

http://snipurl.com/vgs8y
(Wired.com)

Last.fm Ends On-Demand Streaming; Adds Scrobbling Partners

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

London – CBS-owned (NYSE: CBS) social
music discovery and radio service Last.fm announced on Tuesday that it is
discontinuing the on-demand song streaming service on its website, which had
been available for the past two years in the U.S.,
U.K. and Germany, and
will no longer host music videos. The changes will not affect Last.fm’s
flagship Web radio stations. The company also said a number of new digital
music services will now support "scrobbling" of tracks to users’
Last.fm charts. They include Spotify, The Hype Machine, MOG, We7 and Vevo.


 

Related Links:
http://blog.last.fm/2010/04/12/yes-it-does

Phish 3D Concert Film to Screen Nationwide

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Los Angeles
– A 3D concert film featuring jam band Phish will be released nationwide in
theaters on April 30. Produced by Action 3D Productions, AEG Network Live and
Cinedigm, the film — which will screen for one week only in select cities —
was shot in October 2009 at the band’s Festival 8.


 

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/vgsje

http://www.phish3dmovie.com

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