San Bruno, Calif. – Google’s YouTube said it will begin
offering HTML5 videos in the WebM open media file format, and has so far
transcoded 30% of available videos to the format. The WebM format competes with
H.264, which is backed by Apple and Microsoft browsers.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/3rtbwa2
(YouTube blog)
Los Angeles – Radiohead is offering fans who purchased its
new album "The Kings of Limbs" online two free new songs as a show of
gratitude, Billboard reported. The two tracks were released on limited edition
vinyl last week as part of Record Store Day. "This is not part of a new
loyalty points scheme, a Radiohead clubcard or even an air miles redeemable
reward type thing… It is just a big old-fashioned thank you!" the band
wrote in an email.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/444389z
(Billboard)
Alviso, Calif. – TiVo (NASD: TIVO) said on Wednesday that the United
States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sitting en banc has ruled in
its favor in the company’s long-running patent dispute with EchoStar (NASD: SATS) and DISH
Network (NASD: DISH). The court upheld a lower court’s finding that EchoStar and DISH acted
in contempt of an injunction against including TiVo’s patented digital video
recorder technology in their own set-top boxes. "We look forward to the
permanent injunction against EchoStar and Dish Network finally being enforced
with respect to the DVRs they must now disable," TiVo said in a statement.
"This ruling also paves the way for TiVo to receive substantial damages
and contempt sanctions regarding the DVRs that EchoStar and Dish Network failed
to disable."
The dispute is now remanded to a lower court, which is now
empowered to order DISH to disable potentially millions of digital video
recorders in its subscribers’ homes.
"We intend to seek review of the
decision by the United States Supreme Court and seek a stay of the injunction
while doing so," DISH and EchoStar said in a statement.
"We also will
be making a motion to dissolve the injunction based on Tivo’s recent
representations to the Patent and Trademark Office substantially limiting the
scope of the claims at issue in this case.
"Existing DISH Network
customers with DVRs are not immediately impacted by these recent developments.
The disablement ruling covers only certain older generation MPEG2 DVRs. We have
already upgraded many of these customers and, if we are unsuccessful in
obtaining a stay, we will work as quickly as possible to upgrade the remaining
customers to our current generation DVRs, as these are not at issue in the ruling."
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/44cubh4
(TiVo statement)
http://tinyurl.com/3o69d6l
(DISH statement)
http://tinyurl.com/434693l
(Reuters)
New York – The U.S. Justice Department has reached an
agreement with two of the online gambling companies whose domains it seized
last week, which will allow U.S. customers to withdraw their funds and foreign
bettors to continue gambling on the sites. PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker
entered into agreements with the Justice Dept.; the same deal has also been
offered to Absolute Poker.
The sites face numerous charges over allegations
they used payment processors who masked gambling funds as flowers and other
items, to circumvent a U.S. law forbidding banks from processing online
gambling transactions.
Eleven individuals have also been charged in connection
with the domain seizures.
“No individual player accounts were ever frozen
or restrained, and each implicated poker company has at all times been free to
reimburse any player’s deposited funds,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said
in a statement.
“In fact, this office expects the companies to return the
money that U.S. players entrusted to them, and we will work with the poker
companies to facilitate the return of funds to players.”
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/3ccvohf
(Bloomberg)
http://tinyurl.com/3jnfjs7
(Reuters)
http://tinyurl.com/3ddqh64
(DMW previous coverage)
Washington – The Washington Post on Wednesday launched
Trove, a free site that searches around 10,000 news sources to let visitors
personalize their content.
Through integration with Facebook Connect, the site
— which Washington Post CEO Donald Graham called "Pandora for news"
— serves individualized content to users based on information in their
Facebook profiles.
The site’s editors also post breaking news onto the home
page, and create subject-based channels that users can choose to follow.
"The experience is customized and different for everyone," said Vijay
Ravindran, the Post’s senior vice president and chief digital officer.
"We
believe launching Trove is a good step toward understanding what the future of
news could look like."
Trove, which has been in private beta since
mid-February, is currently available on the desktop, Android and Blackberry.
The Post, which reportedly has invested $5-$10 million in the project, landed
the technology behind the service with last July’s acquisition of news
aggregator iCurrent.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/3dg6mca
London – U.K. security researchers have discovered that Apple’s (NASD: AAPL) iPhone and 3G iPad track users’ locations in a secret file, then transfers the data to the user’s computer and forwards it on when a user purchases a new Apple device, the Guardian reported. The file includes a history of a user’s latitude and longitude, along with timestamps — but the researchers say the information does not appear to be transmitted to Apple.
“Apple has made it possible for almost anybody — a jealous spouse, a private detective — with access to your phone or computer to get detailed information about where you’ve been,” Pete Warden, one of the researchers, told the Guardian.
The file could potentially be accessed by someone who “jailbreaks” an iPhone, or by someone with access to an iPhone owner’s computer.
Apple declined comment to the Guardian when asked about why such a file is created or whether it can be disabled.
The Guardian noted that Apple’s terms for its iTunes application include a clause about collecting “the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device,” which may be used “by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services.”
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/3fa8gge (Guardian)
http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/04/apple-location-tracking.html
Hong Kong – Apple (NASD: AAPL) suppliers will begin production on the
company’s next-generation iPhone 5 in July, with the device then expected to
ship in September, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing three people familiar
with the matter. One source told Reuters the device "will have a faster
processor but will look largely similar to the current iPhone 4."
Other
recent reports had indicated that production on some components for the next
iPhone would not begin until September.
Apple sold a record 16.2 million iPhone
4 units in its recent fiscal quarter.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/3m2pee2
(Reuters)
http://tinyurl.com/3h5843a
(DMW previous coverage)
Washington – Startup America, the new White House-backed
entrepreneurial program being chaired by AOL co-founder Steve Case, said on
Wednesday it has landed new commitments that will deliver over $400 million in
services to startups from more than a dozen companies, including American
Express, Google, HP, Intuit, and Microsoft. That’s on top of several large
initial investments from companies such as Intel, IBM and Facebook announced
when the program launched in late January.
The news came as President Obama
visited the Silicon Valley headquarters of social media giant Facebook.
Austan
Goolsbee, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in a blog post
that the latest commitments are part of the Obama administration’s plan to
"create the right environment for high-growth entrepreneurship."
The
plan also includes the elimination of capital gains taxes on qualified small
business investments — which Obama hopes to make permanent — and the
reduction of federal red tape that many see as a barrier to entrepreneurship.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/3zlvc7m
(White House blog)
San Jose, Calif. – Online auction giant eBay (NASD: EBAY) announced on Wednesday
that it has acquired Where, a provider of local mobile advertising services.
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Founded in 2004,
Boston-based Where operates a local mobile discovery application and a
location-based ad network.
Over 120,000 retailers, brands and small merchants
are currently using Where.
eBay is expected to integrate its PayPal unit’s online
payments technology into the Where mobile application.
Related Links:
http://www.ebayinc.com/news#eBay_to_acquire_WHERE
Chantilly, Va. – Digital Signal, a developer of 3D
long-range facial recognition technology, announced on Wednesday that it has
raised $15 million in a third round of venture capital financing, led by
Columbia Capital.
New investors City Light Capital and SilverHaze Partners, and
previous backers Novak Biddle Venture Partners and Paladin Capital Group also
participated.
Founded in 2001, Chantilly, Va.-based Digital Signal says its
technology can primarily be used to detect criminal and/or terrorist activity,
be can also be utilized to identify important customers or frequent travelers.
TechCrunch
likened the company’s technology to the facial recognition seen in the Tom
Cruise film "Minority Report."
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/3cm2cp6
http://tinyurl.com/3oqkxer
(TechCrunch)
