Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

The New York Times is pulling out all the latest digital bells and whistles for its online Olympic Games coverage, devoting 20 staffers in the U.S. to keeping the content refreshed (in addition to two dozen Beijing Bureau members on the ground in China.) Check out the Olympics Tracker, allowing you to easily keep track of the events you’re interested in. It’s available as a web tool or a desktop application. The audio-driven After the Games feature is also very well done. (Cynopsis 8/8)

Yahoo!Telemundo is hoping to attract U.S. Hispanics in search of their Olympics fix. The site’s new Olympics portal features a full complement of news, photo galleries and video highlights (courtesy of the EFE news agency,) as well as social networking options with Flickr and Yahoo! Respuestas. (Cynopsis 8/8)

Digital revenues increased nearly 40% year-over-year at Warner Music Group during the quarter ending June 30 to $166 million, making up 20% of the company’s total revenue intake. But CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. thinks the company can do even better in the digital space. He complained in a conference call that Warner is helping to make music-themed console games like Activision’s Guitar Hero and Viacom’s Rock Band huge successes but seeing little in the way of compensation. (Cynopsis 8/8)

The music industry’s attempts to create its own digital distribution business is like a bad horror movie. It just keeps coming back no matter how badly bludgeoned it gets. Back in 2001 in response to Napster, the music labels launched two competing music download sites, PressPlay and MusicNet (the latter became a white-label music service called MediaNet. Meanwhile, Pressplay was bought by Roxio, and formed the basis for the current version of Napster). Both were utter failures. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/07/the-record-industrys-digital-distribution-plan-totalmusic-comes-back-from-the-dead 8/7)

Rainbow Media-owned Fuse and Microsoft have finalized a deal that will bring the network’s “Summer of Music” series to members of the Xbox Live marketplace. The deal, which includes artists such as Pearl Jam, Metallica and Jack Johnson, will run through September and be offered free to Xbox Live’s 12 million users worldwide. (Broadcasting & Cable 8/7)

TheWB.com, now in beta testing, will launch on Aug. 27, offering classic series that aired on the now-defunct WB television network along with new Web series. Comcast will offer classic WB series via its video-on-demand service; TheWB.com content will also be on Facebook. (Iwantmedia 8/8, http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/digital-downloads/broadband/e3ibbaddb3b39b75b77ddd52b8aa35224bb 8/7)

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Blinkx, an Internet video search company, is proposing buying U.S. search-based advertising network Miva for $39 million to accelerate its expansion in targeted Web ads. Blinkx’s proposed bid “has the potential to significantly change the shape of the business,” analysts say. (Iwantmedia 8/8, http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSL869961320080808 8/8)

The 5% stake in AOL that Google bought in 2005 “may be impaired” and worth less than the $1 billion the search giant originally paid, according to regulatory filing. As part of its investment, Google has the right to demand that Time Warner spin off AOL or buy back its stake. (Iwantmedia 8/8, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080808/ap_on_hi_te/google_aol 8/8)

Google is developing a system that lets advertisers limit and measure the number of times users view ads on its partners’ sites. Clients will be able to better place ads based on the number of views they get and the number of users that visit a Web site after seeing it. (Iwantmedia 8/8, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=adXENueI5QbQ 8/7)

Yahoo is set to announce that it will allow users to shut off targeted advertising on its Web sites, as a U.S. congressional committee continues to air concerns about consumer privacy. As media companies struggle to make money online, Congress is mulling what kind of ads ought to be allowed. (Iwantmedia 8/8, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/07/AR2008080703104.html 8/8)

The beta version of Sling Media’s SlingPlayer 2.0 is now available for Windows PCs as a free download on the Sling site. The new software suite adds a bunch of new functions including a live video buffer for more DVR-like controls, an interactive player guide and multiple viewing modes and sizes allowing you to shrink the feed on your desktop. However the much-hyped Clip+Sling feature, allowing you to clip up to 5 minutes of video to share with friends online, is not a part of the beta. (Cynopsis 8/8)

Video metadata management company Gotuit announced a partnership with Move Networks integrating services to better define logical ad insertion points within video libraries. The Gotuit-Move solution will create an ad timing system to insert ads at strategic places within a clip using rich scene-level metadata. The idea is to improve engagement and enhance search functionality by enabling video to be indexed scene by scene. (Cynopsis 8/8)