VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:

New partnership brings Helio to Virgin Mobile — Virgin Mobile USA will acquire the U.S. arm of South korea-based SK Telecom, namely, a mobile operator called Helio, according to the Financial Times. Both mobile operators have been struggling to make money by piggybacking on the infrastructure of existing carriers. This announcement doesn’t offer any sense of how they might bounce back; it just seems loaded with more bad news, like the estimate that Virgin Mobile USA will lose up to 160,000 users in the second quarter of this year.

Starbucks will stop selling CDs — Starbucks is abandoning its plan to become an entertainment hub where customers can pick up a CD or iTunes gift card along with their lattes, reports Silicon Alley Insider. All in-store music offerings should be gone by September. Starbucks customers may not notice, since they weren’t buying many of those CDs anyway, but this is more bad news for the struggling music industry, which once saw Starbucks as an opportunity for growth.

Digg competitor Mixx adds community-building features – Mixx, another site that allows users to vote on media content, is launching a new feature called Mixx Communities. Users can now set up their own Mixx sites, allowing them to build a Mixx community around specific topics. Another competitor called Reddit already enabled user-created pages, and even went a step further last week by going open source.

Intel doesn’t want Vista either — Intel has decided that it won’t upgrade the computers of its 80,000 employees to the latest and arguably least popular version of the Microsoft operating system, according to The New York Times’ anonymous source. That looks pretty bad for Microsoft, since the software company and chip maker have had a famously close relationship; some observers dubbed the pair “Wintel.” On the other hand, it’s not that surprising, because it’s pretty darn hard to find anyone who wants Vista on their computer. (Aside from VentureBeat writer MG Siegler, that is.)

Social network Multiply lets you backup your videos and photos — With an application built on the Adobe AIR platform, Multiply users can automatically backup all the media in selected folders on their computers. The site charges $20 per year for unlimited storage. In some ways, the move makes sense, since there’s so much media hosted by social networks like Multiply anyway.

Craigslist to overtake eBay in 2009? — The online marketplace market (what a mouthful) is going to have a new leader within a year, predicts entrepreneur and blogger Andrew Chen. Spurred by a comment at the GigaOM’s just-finished Structure conference, he looked at traffic numbers from Compete and Quantcast. As eBay traffic falls and Craigslist traffic rises, the latter will overtake the former in 2009, Chen says.

Vint Cerf: Video downloads will be more popular than streaming — The current model of video sites like YouTube won’t last, says Google’s Vint Cerf, the computer scientist frequently described as “the father of the Internet.” In a (streaming) video at Beet.TV, Cerf argues that as web video’s popularity increases and its technology improves, most users will start downloading videos to their computer, rather than streaming them off a site.

Beginning today, Starbucks across the country will offer free Wi-Fi Internet to paying customers. This is great news. Unfortunately there is some fine print behind this “free.”

First of all customers will have to buy a Starbucks Card, which requires that you put a minimum of $5 on it to purchase, according to USA Today. Second, you’ll have to register online for the Starbucks Rewards Card program. Third, this card will need to be used at least once a month. And four, your two free hours a day that a purchase buys you, must be used all in one sitting.

It’s free just as long as you don’t consider the costs of all of this hassle.

Still, this new Wi-Fi service being provided by AT&T is going to be immeasurably better than the previous T-Mobile Hotspot paid Internet that all Starbucks stores had.

Starbucks is hoping that free Wi-Fi will entice more visitors to enter its ubiquitous stores across the country. For some people, simply making better coffee would do the trick.

[photo: flickr/slushpup]

Avast ye pirates! The Bush Administration is accusing China, Russia and seven other countries of failing to protect American producers of movies and other entertainment from piracy. The question comes to mind: why did it take so long for the U.S. to figure this out? Also included on the list are Argentina, Chile, India, Israel, Pakistan, Thailand and Venezuela. Somehow it seems like this conversation should have taken place, oh, maybe 10 years ago?

Don’t expect Wii price cuts: Nintendo’s CEO Satoru Iwata said the company has no plans to cut the price of its popular Wii video game console, which costs $249 in the U.S. Demand for the Wii has been so strong that the company has been able to keep it at the same price since its launch in the fall of 2006. The same goes for the Nintendo DS handheld, Iwata told Reuters. The company said earlier this week that said its operating profit more than doubled in the year ended March 31. It forecast a further 9 percent gain this year to 530 billion yen ($5.08 billion). Clearly, Nintendo is just as happy as Microsoft and Sony to milk gamers dry.

Sun swallows Montalvo: Sun Microsystems confirmed that it bought the assets of Montalvo Systems for an undisclosed price. The high-flying microprocessor design company had tried to develop low-power chips to go up against Intel, but it ran into delays finishing its chip and had to sell out for a fire-sale price. Peter Glaskowsky, former editor of the Microprocessor Report and an executive at Montalvo, mourned the end of Montalvo in a blog post. Sun declined to say how it will use the Montalvo assets. Now what is Sun going to try? It could use Montalvo to go to war with Intel, protect itself with patents, or get a good engineering team. Glakowsky, by the way, has interesting analysis of Apple’s $278 million purchase of PA Semi.

EA to release Spore creature creator June 17: Spore is the next big game coming from Electronic Arts’ game design master Will Wright. The Spore Creature Creator tool will allow gamers to start designing their own creatures ahead of the Sept. 17 release of the big game. Gamers will be able to show off their creations and EA will get a lot of free labor. That’s because it will use the creations as rival creatures inside Spore. Thus, when you play the real game starting in September, your character will have square off against other creatures created by all of the people who use the tool. It’s another brilliant move by Wright.

Fashion venture moves forward: Online fashion company Indochino has received an undisclosed investment from Burda Digital Ventures, the venture capital arm of German media company Hubert Burda Media. Indochino will use the financing to build up its operations, according to a release from the company. Visitors to the company’s Web site, Indochino.com, can order custom-tailored men’s suits for home delivery. Boris Wertz, a principal at W Media Ventures, previously invested in Indochino and introduced the company to Burda Digital Ventures, according to the release. Indochino has offices in Victoria, British Columbia, and Shanghai.

AT&T boots T-Mobile: Clearing the way for Apple’s iPhones and iPod Touch handhelds to be used in Starbucks, AT&T began replacing T-Mobile as the Wi-Fi service provider in the Starbucks coffee houses in San Antonio. AT&T will talk more about how it will replace T-Mobile in Starbucks stores in other markets.

Skype guys raising a new fund: Skype co-founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, as well as former Skype veteran Geoffrey Prentice, are raising a new venture fund of as much as $450 million. GigaOm reports that they plan to raise a total of 300 million euros.

Dell says ignore XP end-of-life deadline: Dell said that it would keep selling Windows XP as long as customers want it, despite a deadline from Microsoft, which wants everybody to start buying new systems with Windows Vista. Microsoft has set June 30 as the deadline for selling XP to consumers.