New Random House Unit to Pen Stories for Video Games

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

New York
– Publisher Random House has established a department that will create original
stories for video games, as well as consult on games in development, The Wall
Street Journal reported. The publisher has already begun soliciting buyers for
two original projects, and also partnered with game developer Stardock on its
forthcoming title, "Elemental: War of Magic." "We need new
revenue streams," Gina Centrello, publisher of the Random House Publishing
Group, told The Journal.


 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/ydhu89f
(WSJ)

Movieclips.com API Offers Developers 12,000 Film Clips

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Santa Monica, Calif. – Movieclips.com, a site that offers more than
12,000 clips from six Hollywood studios,
announced on Monday that it has released an API that will allow developers worldwide
to utilize its clips on third-party websites. The company’s library includes
short clips of films from 20th Century Fox, MGM, Paramount, Sony Pictures Entertainment,
Universal Pictures and Warner Bros.


 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/y9hr2zj

http://www.movieclips.com

British Library Creating Archive of Defunct U.K. Websites

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

London – The British Library
has embarked on a project to archive defunct U.K. websites, the Associated Press
reported. The Library’s directive includes a charge to keep a copy of every
published work distributed in the territory. So far, the online archive
contains some 6,000 sites.


 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/yjvjmna

Survey: Web Trumps Newspapers, Radio as U.S. News Source

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Washington – The Internet
now has surpassed newspapers and radio to become the third most popular news
platform in the U.S.,
according to a new survey by the Pew
Research Center.

The Web (61%) now trails only local (78%) and national (73%) television news,
with six in 10 Americans getting their news from a combination of online and
offline sources on a typical day.

By comparison, just half said that they rely
on newspapers.

In addition, more than one quarter of those surveyed said that
they now access some form of news through their cell phones.

And with so many
Americans using social technology sites, much of that news is going viral.

Among those who get news online, 75% get news forwarded through email or posts
on social networking sites, and 52% share links to news with others.

The
complete report is available through the link below.

 

Related Links:
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Online-News.aspx

Sony: Leave PlayStation 3 Off While System Clock Issue Fixed

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
3

Update: Reports on Tuesday indicate that the problem has been resolved, and without any data loss. "We are aware that the internal clock functionality in the PS3 units other than the slim model, recognized the year 2010 as a leap year," Sony said in a statement.

Tokyo
– Sony (NYSE:  SNE) reports that a "connection failure," caused by a bug in the
PlayStation 3’s internal system clock, caused a widespread outage of its
PlayStation Network online service over the weekend that continued into Monday.
In a blog post, the company took the dramatic step of encouraging PlayStation 3
owners not to turn on their systems over the next 24 hours, while it addresses
the problem.

"We hope to resolve this problem within the next 24 hours. In
the meantime, if you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that
you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some
functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to
restore certain data," Sony wrote on the PlayStation blog.

The outage also
appeared to affect previously-downloaded games from PlayStation Network as
users tried to play them off-line.

Sony said the only model not affected by the glitch is
the new, slimmer PlayStation 3 that went on sale in September.

 

Related Links:
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010/03/latest-info-on-playstation-network-status/

http://tinyurl.com/yk7x8nz
(N.Y. Times)

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/03/apocalyps3/

Social Mapping Service Platial Shuts Down

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Portland,
Ore. – Platial, the provider of a
social mapping service based on Google Maps API, has shut down its service,
TechCrunch reported.

Founded in 2005, Oregon-based Platial had raised a total
of $3.4 million in venture capital, from investors including Kleiner Perkins
Caufield & Byers, Omidyar Network and Keynote Ventures.

The service let
users create and tag their own online maps. In a blog post, Platial said that
all the maps that users created have been replaced with instructions and links
for exporting the data.

The company urged users to download their maps
immediately, as "the service may go offline as soon as March 2nd (when it
happens it will be due to a disconnection from out internet service providers)."

"We are painfully aware that this is an incredibly short amount of time to
dump this on people. The only response is a sincere apology," Platial
added.

 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/y93wk66
(TechCrunch)

http://tinyurl.com/yjsmx7g
(Platial blog)

http://platial.com

Bethesda Softworks Parent ZeniMax Raises $1.8 Million

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Rockville,
Md. – ZeniMax Media, the parent
company of game developer Bethesda Softworks, has raised $1.8 million through
the sale of options and warrants, according to a filing with the Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC).

The company, which counts Hall of Fame baseball
player Cal Ripken, CBS president Les Moonves and filmmaker Jerry Bruckheimer among
its board members, said that it still plans to raise another $360,000 in the
round.

ZeniMax last summer also raised $105 million through a debt offering to
pay for its acquisition of id Software, the Texas-based developer of game
franchises such as "Doom," "Quake" and
"Wolfenstein."

 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/yfdv4zr
(SEC filing)

http://www.zenimax.com

EFF

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

Universal to Pay Legal Fees of Dancing Baby Video Uploader

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
1

San Francisco
– Universal Music Group has been ordered by a federal judge to pay some of the
attorneys’ fees incurred by Stephanie Lenz, whose video of her toddler dancing
to Prince’s "Let’s Go Crazy" was wrongfully taken down from YouTube (NASD:  GOOG)
at the label’s request. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital
civil liberties group, argued Lenz’s case asking a judge to declare that her
use of "Let’s Go Crazy" in her video was a "fair use" of
the copyrighted Prince song.

The court agreed, and the video was reinstated on
YouTube. Lenz also sued Universal for her attorneys’ fees, and a judge has
granted partial summary judgment.

The ruling indicates that Lenz will be able
to recover attorneys’ fees related to challenging Universal’s takedown notice,
but may not be able to collect fees related to her additional claims of damages
against Universal, according to The Hollywood Reporter’s coverage.

 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/yk3qyn3
(Hollywood Reporter)

http://www.eff.org/cases/lenz-v-universal

AOL Sells Marketing Network Buy.at to Digital Window

By
Mark Hefflinger
-
0

New York
– Looking for ways pare down expenses, AOL (NYSE: AOL) has sold U.K.-based Perfiliate, the
operator of an affiliate marketing network under the brand name Buy.at, to
London-based Digital Window.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

AOL had acquired Buy.at for a reported $125-$150 million in 2008.

Founded in
2002, Buy.at is a network that lets publishers in the U.S., U.K.,
and Scandinavia partner with merchants to help
drive consumers to those companies’ websites.

AOL reportedly has been trying
to shed several of its non-core assets, including its ICQ instant messaging
unit, social network Bebo and video site Truveo, among others.

 

Related Links:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE62006L20100301

http://blog.affiliatewindow.com/?p=1054

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