Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Microsoft secured a victory in its search engine battle with Google by striking a deal with HP to have the No. 1 PC company place a toolbar on its machines that links to the software giant’s Live Search engine, the companies said Monday. In the agreement that takes effect in January, HP — which will end its a similar deal with Yahoo! — will also make Live Search the default engine for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. (ClipSyndicate/New York Financial Press 6/2, The New York Times/Reuters 6/3, Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg 6/3)

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang ordered up a draft press release rejecting a Microsoft takeover bid several months before January’s unsolicited bid, according to newly unsealed company documents. The new disclosures bring to light Yahoo’s resistance to a merger with a software giant. (Iwantmedia 6/3, http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN0229819820080603 6/3)

Some juicy details were revealed when a judge unsealed a document in a Yahoo shareholder lawsuit filed after the company’s board rebuffed Microsoft’s advances. Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang appears to have thwarted the bid by instituting an expensive employee severance program on Feb. 12 that would have cost Microsoft anywhere from an extra $514 million to $2.4 billion. (Cynopsis 6/3)

As Techcrunch wrote last week, Facebook is turning parts of its application platform open source, the company announced today. It’s available here for download.  This comes a little more than a year after Facebook Platform first launched to allow third party developers a way to get their applications directly onto Facebook. The company says more than 24,000 applications have now been built on the platform and more than 400,000 developers are building these applications. 140 new applications are added to the directory each day. “Nearly all” Facebook users have added at least one of those applications. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/02/facebook-turns-platfrom-open-source-via-fbopen 6/2)

Today iLike co-founder Patrick Koppula unveils his latest project, ffwd which is trying to take channel surfing to the web. ffwd behaves like a video recommendation site that mixes StumbleUpon, Last.fm, and Pandora. The site will begin taking applications for their beta today, though it won’t begin until later this summer. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/03/ffwd-channel-surfing-comes-to-the-web-and-your-wii 6/3)

(Below) Let me break this down for you as this scares the hell out of me.  The standard package (snail-speed and low capacity) is $29.95 monthly at 768 kilobits per second with a cap of 5 GB of data.  If you’re simply an e-mail/web page kind of user, no worries.  You probably won’t ever reach capacity in a month.  If you download TV shows or movies, take note.  A typical standard definition movie is 1.5 GB whereas a high-definition movie is 6 – 8GB.  One HD movie surpasses the 5GB cap in one swoop.  To be fair, there is a more expensive option for $54.99 monthly which offers a 40GB cap.  Time Warner Cable should focus on providing faster broadband speeds rather than charging users additional fees for access.  If Time Warner Cable was afraid of services like iTunes or Netflix, perhaps they should work on improving the product (on demand and archaic menu interface) rather than attempting to outwit them with these hidden fees.  Disgusting business move in my opinion.

Time Warner Cable will soon become one of the first Internet service providers to charge extra for people whose online activity goes beyond a certain monthly limit. The trial will begin Thursday for new subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, who will have monthly allowances for uploads and downloads and will have to pay $1 per gigabyte if they exceed those limits. (The Washington Post/Associated Press 6/2)

In an effort to save on bandwidth costs Veoh Networks took steps to block international users in 33 countries from accessing its videos, reports NewTeeVee. Expect more belt-tightening at these highly funded, low-revenue generating video start-ups. (Cynopsis 6/3)

The Filter, the media recommendation engine that Techcrunch covered last April, has opened its doors to the public. The Peter Gabriel-backed company offers an entertainment start page that provides recommendations on movies, music, and online video (it is mostly focused on perfecting its music recommendations for the time being). (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/02/the-filter-launches-with-a-message-from-peter-gabriel 6/2)

Peter Gabriel Discusses The Filter

Buzznet, the social network whose CEO once said that he would like to build “the next Viacom,” is launching a sister site: Celebuzz.com, a community for enthusiasts of celebrity news. Celebrity gossip fans are said to use “more than one source to get the same exact story.” (Iwantmedia 6/3, http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-9957573-36.html 6/2)

At a press conference to kick off Internet Week New York, a festival promoting New York’s digital industries, mayor Michael Bloomberg is unveiling NYC Seed, a venture firm for local tech start-ups. (Iwantmedia 6/3, http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-9957814-36.html 6/2)

The Internet will become the primary news source within five years, says a new report released at a meeting of the World Association of Newspapers. Newspapers are advised to explore mobile and Internet markets. They “cannot count on their print editions alone to keep them solvent.” (Iwantmedia 6/3, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080603/ap_on_hi_te/sweden_newspaper_congress_digital 6/3)

Lloyd Braun, the former Yahoo entertainment czar turned Hollywood and online programmer, is said to be teaming up with Microsoft to develop a Web site aimed at aggregating celebrity and entertainment news. The still-unnamed site will rival AOL’s TMZ.com, Perez Hilton and others. (Iwantmedia 6/3, http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080602/bermanbraun-will-make-both-msn-celeb-site-and-also-yahoo-lunacy-report 6/2)

myLifetime.com is rolling out a regiment of digital extras for Season 2 of Army Wives premiering on the network June 8. Fans can stream full episodes or a 9-minute season recap of season 1 for free, connect with fans through a variety of social networking tools and view in depth character pages. (Cynopsis 6/3)

A snooze for me but hey, I’m not the target demo.

Season 1 Recap

Google and Amazon.com will be long-term winners on the Internet, while Yahoo and IAC InterActiveCorp fall by the wayside and eBay becomes a merger target. So says Sanford Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay in a new 310-page report entitled “U.S. Internet: The End of the Beginning.” (Iwantmedia 6/3, http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSN0232735820080603 6/3)