Recordnet.com tries to save Stockton’s Fourth of July
Who says newspapers aren’t embracing the Internet? Stockton, a city in California’s San Joaquin Valley, had to cancel its July 4 fireworks celebration due to a tight budget. Don’t worry, though — the town’s paper is using the web to bring a a little light to bummed-out patriots.
True, people can always watch a fireworks ceremony on TV, but that just isn’t the same, is it? On a national broadcast, you can’t watch those colorful rockets… Continue Reading
Roundup: 18 Android phones coming this year, MySpace hoping for innovation, and more
Here’s the latest action:
Google: Expect 18 Android phones by the end of the year — That number could be as high as 20, says Andy Rubin, senior director for mobile platforms.
News Corp. and MySpace execs say MySpace needs to innovate — During an interview at the All Things Digital conference (owned by News Corp., incidentally), MySpace chief executive Owen Van Natta also discussed concerns that the site might lose its lucrative search deal with Google, saying the… Continue Reading
Roundup: Venture capital’s alleged irrelevance, Zillow’s continued success, and more
Here’s the latest action:
Study says venture capitalists less relevant for web startups — Santa Clara University Prof. Robert Hendershott has concluded that lower startup costs mean many entrepreneurs should go it alone, rather than raise funding from VCs.
Why isn’t Zillow dead? – Webware’s Rafe Needleman says he thought the real estate startup was in trouble, but an interview with chief executive Rich Barton convinced him otherwise.
Google Product Search for Android adds barcode scanning — Now users can… Continue Reading
Roundup: Hulu eyes world domination, Schmidt busts antitrust talk, Nokia plots app store and more
Hulu closer to going global — The online video site backed by NBC Universal and Fox has signed a bevy of content deals with overseas television producers with an eye toward British and Bollywood programming.
OpenTable sets terms for IPO — The restaurant reservation service plans to sell 3 million shares for somewhere between $12 and $14 each to raise $16.1 million net from an IPO underwritten by Merrill Lynch & Co.
iPhones to point North — The next model… Continue Reading
Roundup: VC investments plunge in Q1, Cisco sees sales stabilize, Facebook on Digg and more
Here’s the latest action:
Slowdown hits venture industry worldwide in first quarter — The venture capital industry sank 50 percent in the U.S., but the drop was mirrored in places such as Europe, Israel, China and India. Overseas, venture-backed companies raised $1.87 billion in 250 deals, compared with $3.65 billion in 430 deals a year ago, according to VentureSource. The first-quarter numbers also were down significantly from the fourth quarter of 2008, when investors committed $2.88… Continue Reading
News Corp launches gossip news site Daily Fill
News Corp’s web incubator Sligshot Labs has finally let its new gossip and entertainment news site, Daily Fill, out of the bag. And it’s hit the ground running, racking up 1.3 million unique visitors in January alone during its beta release. At this rate, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based company expects to catch up with competitors TMZ and Perez Hilton sooner rather than later.
For the most part, Daily Fill is no different from the gaggle of… Continue Reading
Daily Fill: The new gossip site coming out of News Corp.
Daily Fill, a new celebrity-gossip website, is the first project to come out of News Corp.’s internet startup incubator, Slingshot Labs. The site, which has yet to launch officially, has been live for at least a few weeks, if a mention of it on Twitter by NBC television personality Shira Lazar is any indication.
Slingshot, announced last February, intends to develop projects in conjunction with MySpace and other News Corp.-owned companies. Judging by Daily Fill, the… Continue Reading
Why does Facebook make News Corp. quake in its boots about MySpace?
MySpace is no longer “the flavor of the month” among social networks because it’s too low-brow for the aspirational American populace, according to journalist Michael Wolff. He’s in a better position to know what News Corp is thinking than most: He published an extensive biography today about News Corp mogul Rupert Murdoch called “The Man Who Owns The News.”
Wolff goes into more detail about this classist idea in an interview with BusinessWeek’s Jon Fine, excerpted… Continue Reading
Two-timing: Yahoo talking to the same potential partners that Microsoft is talking to
Yesterday came word that Microsoft was talking to Time Warner and News Corp. about potential deals to help it acquire Yahoo. So naturally today comes word that Yahoo is talking to those very same companies about doing similar deals — just without Microsoft, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The whole thing is just ridiculous. We’re back to where we were in February — everyone is talking merger with everyone else.
Time Warner is talking with Yahoo… Continue Reading
Microsoft seeks partners for Yahoo scrapyard endeavor
If I told you that Microsoft was talking about buying Yahoo and asked you to pick a month that this discussion was taking place, would you pick: a) January 2007 b) January 2008 c) May 2008 or d) Right now?
Wrong. The correct answer is e) All of the above.
Yes, shockingly enough, Microsoft is still trying to buy at least a piece of Yahoo. It is now said to be seeking other partners to make a deal work, according to the… Continue Reading
Roundup: Diving Dow’s depressing month, Microsoft virtualizes, and Xbox 360 price cuts rumors
Here’s the latest action:
Dow Jones has its worst June since Depression: U.S. stocks tumbled on Friday and sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its worst June performance since the Great Depression. Record oil prices, credit-market write downs and the the economic slump spooked everybody. Goldman Sachs told investors to sell GM stock, sparking a sell-off as crude prices rose again. The broader S&P 500 index fell 2.9 percent on Friday. The Dow is at… Continue Reading
Usage data shows video site Hulu is thriving
Having just moved into a new apartment, I was without cable television for a few weeks. So what did I do to watch some of the network shows such as The Office that I’m addicted to? I turned to Hulu, the streaming video service that was started last year by NBC Universal and News Corp. (owners of Fox). Given some new usage numbers just released, it appears others are tuning into Hulu with me.
Nielsen Net Ratings… Continue Reading
Roundup: Facebook’s big profile changes, MySpace misses revenue targets, and more
Big Facebook profile changes are coming, sure to impact developers — Facebook has been experimenting with a ground-up redesign of its user interface for months, that it hopes will improve communication among users. Now, the company is providing Facebook application developers with more details on the changes — and how those changes are going to affect applications. The new home page will have a tabbed interface for news feed, personal info, photos, and something tentatively called… Continue Reading
Roundup: Microsoft ads for News Corp., Paramount’s virtual goods, and more
1. WSJ Digital Network hires Microsoft for ads
2. Paramount Pictures, live in virtual world Habbo
3. Tim Draper raising fund for entertainment startups
4. MPAA downplay claim of movie piracy at colleges
5. Southern Cross first Aussie VC firm to open Silicon Valley office
6. How to find private photos on SmugMug
7. Redpoint Ventures does well with Fraud Sciences
8. Sprint and Clearwire revive WiMAX plan
9. VCs showed best returns of 2007 in Q2
Wall Street Journal Digital Network hires Microsoft… Continue Reading
Source: Yes, LinkedIn and News Corp. are working on a deal
A rumor surfaced last week, in Techcrunch UK, that News Corp. is looking at buying business networking site LinkedIn.
A well-placed source has confirmed with us that these talks are serious. LinkedIn has declined to comment.
News Corp.’s strategy, from what we understand: Somehow integrate LinkedIn’s network with the Wall Street Journal as well as its other newspapers around the world, hopefully figuring out how to recoup News Corp.’s newspapers’ declining classified ad revenue in the process.
The… Continue Reading
Roundup: Silicon Valley hot in mobile, Jaiku, LinkedIn, IAC, more
Here’s the action that you missed over Thanksgiving break:
1. Silicon Valley becoming mobile innovation hub
2. Why Google bought Jaiku
3. LinkedIn drawing suitors?
4. IAC to spend $100M in China
5. NeoEdge launches ad network for casual games
6. Feds may subsidize broadband access
Silicon Valley becoming mobile innovation hub — Despite the U.S. being the laughing stock of the world for its backward mobile networks, Silicon Valley is becoming a center for mobile innovation anyway. Nokia, the large Finnish… Continue Reading
Myspace to open developer platform — good for web startups
It’s official: MySpace, seeking to defend its status as the leading social network, will open up its platform to third-party developers over the next couple of months.
The news was confirmed tonight at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, where News Corporation’s Rupert Murdoch and MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe were featured guests.
Like rival Facebook’s move six months ago, MySpace’s move will let developers build applications within MySpace and make money from them.
The full significance of this… Continue Reading
Roundup: LGC Wireless bought, RockYou also bought? and more
1) LGC Wireless to be acquired by telecom components company
2) Rumors abound that News Corp. is buying RockYou for hundreds of millions of dollars
3) Myspace + Skype: newly-joined parts of the “Web 2.0 address book”
4) Apple finally decides to return developers’ love
5) Treemo, another mobile and online content sharing service, raises 2.5 million
6) LiveScribe, a near-magical pen for taking written and audio notes at the same time, raises $22 million
LGC Wireless to be acquired by… Continue Reading
When it comes to music fans, iLike faces Myspace
ILike, by far the most popular music application on Facebook, has started overtaking MySpace in sheer number of fans registered for some top music artists.
The young Seattle company is being coy on specifics, but consider this: Artists like Nickelback, Modest Mouse and Kayne West now have many more fans/friends on iLike than they do on the giant network MySpace. Name an artist, and there’s almost a 50-50 chance they’ll be more popular on iLike.
While iLike… Continue Reading
Roundup: Murdoch closer on WSJ, Scoop Bar, Wikia-Grub, Hitachi and more
Here’s the latest action:
Murdoch appears to have enough Bancroft family support for purchase –The jury is still officially out, but the NYT is saying it looks like Dow Jones and its jewel, the Wall Street Journal, will indeed to go to Murdoch’s News Corp.
Hakia’s Scoop Bar — Hakia, one of the new search engines trying to take on Google by using “semantic” technology, has released a so-called Scoop Bar, which takes you more directly to the text… Continue Reading