Filed under: TECHNOLOGY
The Kindle DX launch might have sparked a wave of hype about the next generation of newspapers, but not everyone’s so quick to agree: Dallas Morning News CEO James Moroney told a Senate subcommittee yesterday that the Kindle isn’t a "platform that’s going to save newspapers in the near term." According to Moroney, Amazon demands 70 percent of subscription revenue from newspapers, and further requires content owners to grant Amazon the right to republish content to other devices — like, say, the iPhone. (http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/07/amazon-takes-70-percent-of-kindle-newspaper-revenues/ 5/7)
Yikes! Bad form Amazon. Consider this. Apple takes 30% of the revenue and gives 70% to the content provider. Amazon wants the opposite. 70% of the profit for content they didn’t help create or fund?!? Are they aware that it costs money to create content or do they assume that because the online environment has pilfered the sh*t out of it, that’s it worth less than half? Ouch. Being a former LA Times employee, this just makes me sad. So, in retaliation, I will continue to lovingly adore my Sunday NY Times and hope that some folks remember the joy of newsprint.
April proved to be a dismal month for technology sector jobs and overall employment, but there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. Granted, this morning brought sobering news
of the U.S. unemployment rate hitting its highest mark since 1983: 8.9%. In the past month, 700,000 jobs were lost in the U.S., bringing the total number of U.S. jobs lost since December, 2007 to 5.7 million in April, 2009. However, while the economy continued to suffer from recessionary conditions over the past month, the pace of layoffs, at least in the tech sector may be decelerating. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/08/tech-jobs-still-scarce-but-layoffs-may-be-slowing-down/ 5/8)
Motorola is developing a TV remote that doubles as a telephone. The company’s R331 VIP rechargeable remote, which was first introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, is compatible with IPTV set-top boxes. Multichannel News (5/7)
Filed under: MISC
The new "Star Trek" film from Viacom’s Paramount Pictures is forecast to rake in more than $70 million its opening weekend. A hit could offer new opportunities for merchandising. The studio promoted the film through the Internet, mobile phones and other non-traditional media. (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aLesMe8OgzQ8 5/8)
Filed under: BROADCAST/CABLE
On April 29, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes "officially announced the death of Big Media" by revealing plans to spin off AOL. And now, Time Warner magazine unit Time Inc. "has a funereal atmosphere about it." Synergy has "proved to be the most overhyped concept" in business. (Iwantmedia 5/7, http://www.newsweek.com/id/195961 5/5)
Tribune Broadcasting acquired the sitcoms Entourage and Curb Your Enthusiasm from HBO with both scheduled to air on each of its 23 stations beginning fall 2010. Both series will air as strips, five days a week in late fringe with each running once on the weekend. Tribune’s all-barter deal covers three years, with a three-minute national and four-minute local advertising split in each show. (Cynopsis 5/7)
HBO approved a new drama series called Treme set in modern-day New Orleans, cites Variety. The number of episodes is still undecided with production beginning this fall, though HBO picked up the pilot and nine scripts so far. The action follows the main characters, musicians and a restaurateur who live in the Treme district in New Orleans, as they try to rebuild their lives post-Hurricane Katrina. (Cynopsis 5/7)
NBC signed The Office’s Mindy Kaling to a two-year, seven-figure overall deal, per Variety. The agreement allows Kaling to still write and appear in The Office for next season while developing a new series where she will star. (Cynopsis 5/7)
CBS may recycle two classic game show concepts as the network is considering ordering pilots for Let’s Make a Deal and The Dating Game. (Cynopsis 5/7)
Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
News Corp’s. 20th Century Fox says that the pirated version of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" that hit the Web on March 30 has been downloaded 4 million times — four times greater than previous estimates. The piracy could conceivably have cost Fox $28.7 million. (Iwantmedia 5/7, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i4b78d64d1d19f896755bb07f108f27f2 5/6)
News Corp. is reporting a 16% decline in advertising revenue within its Fox Interactive Media subsidiary, which includes MySpace. The unit saw reductions in both brand and performance-based ads. Also dragging on the unit are costs associated with MySpace Music. (Iwantmedia 5/7, http://www.clickz.com/3633666 5/7)
Twitter, the hit microblogging service, is not for sale, insists co-founder Biz Stone in an appearance on ABC’s "The View." Says Stone: "We’re just getting started. The company is two years old, we have so much to do, so much product stuff to fix, and so much growing to do." (Iwantmedia 5/7, http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE54605920090507 5/7)
Twitter Search is easily the most promising aspect of Twitter. People talk about mundane updates, or connecting with companies, or following celebrities — but that’s all small scale. The real power of Twitter lies in its aggregate data. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/07/google-twitter-to-start-indexing-links-for-search/ 5/7)
Agree 120%.
Hulu, the video site owned by NBC Universal, News Corp. and Disney, is signing its first batch of content deals with international television producers, the first step towards a full global launch of the service. Hulu is in talks to launch the site in eight of the leading broadcast markets. (Iwantmedia 5/7, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a77ac5d2-3a67-11de-8a2d-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1 5/6)
Customers at a New York City KFC outlet, hoping to redeem downloadable coupons from Oprah.com for a free meal, became upset when the fast-food restaurant ran out of its new grilled chicken. But Internet rumors of a riot are unfounded, says Kentucky Fried Chicken. (Iwantmedia 5/7, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090507/ap_en_tv/us_kfc_oprah_coupon 5/6)
ABC is opening an online ABC Music Lounge to offer songs and artists featured on its shows. The site features a streaming "radio station" that will play more than 200 tunes. The site also offers Web pages for featured artists and a link for online song purchases. (Iwantmedia 5/7, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090507/ap_en_mu/us_tv_abc_music_lounge 5/7)
Disney is developing an Internet subscription service that will offer company-branded content. "We are looking to create a real blend in terms of how we monetize and how we reach consumers and what kind of product we make available," says CEO Bob Iger. (Iwantmedia 5/7, http://www.reuters.com/article/industryNews/idUSTRE5450FI20090506 5/5)
Filed under: WIRELESS
Apple has just sent out an email alert to iPhone developers that any new app submitted to the App Store will have to be ready for the iPhone 3.0 software, which is due shortly (probably around Apple’s WWDC event in June). Beginning today, any app submitted that isn’t 3.0 compatible will be rejected.
(http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/07/its-30-or-die-for-new-iphone-apps/ 5/7)
Pandora
is a company that mainly makes its money through advertising deals on its streaming Internet radio service. But a growing portion of the business is also affiliate downloads of songs that users hear on Pandora and want to buy on either iTunes or Amazon’s MP3 service. And the biggest mover accelerating growth in that regard are downloads taking place on the iPhone. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/07/the-iphone-is-accelerating-music-sales-for-pandora/ 5/7)
![clip_image001[6]](http://dailymarauder.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/clip_image0016.jpg?w=270&h=502 "clip_image001[6]")
Filed under: GAMING
Thanks to significant cost-cutting, video game publisher Electronic Arts narrowed its net loss in the company’s fiscal fourth quarter, which ended March 31. EA reported revenue of $860 million, a 24% decrease from the comparable period in 2008, and a loss of $42 million, which was a big improvement over the $94 million it lost in the year-earlier time frame. The Wall Street Journal (5/6) , CNET (5/6)
With its recession-busting Wii home-gaming console and its DS portable platform, Nintendo reported an annual profit for the year ended March 31 of $2.8 billion. And the company remains bullish on the future: It forecast a 7.5% increase in profit through March 2010. The Washington Post/The Associated Press (5/7)
Filed under: TECHNOLOGY
Bang & Olufsen has introduced the BeoVision 4 plasma display system, a massive, upscale unit that weighs in at 500 pounds and costs $111,000. The 103-inch model also comes on a motorized stand that silently moves the screen up and down and allows the unit to be tilted plus or minus 4 degrees or rotated left or right 20 degrees. TWICE (5/6)
(Below) Smells like the Kindle Re-up to me.
Rupert Murdoch, while reporting News Corp.’s flat Q3 earnings, says that his newspapers will begin to charge for online content within the year. He also vows that News Corp. will not feed its content to Amazon’s Kindle. “We will control the relationship with our customers.” (Iwantmedia 5/7, http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/news-corp-profit-flat-murdoch/story.aspx?guid={928676F8-4CA9-41BF-BF8A-9EC525A78111} 5/6)
Many people are dying to get Google’s Android operating system onto their netbooks – Google’s OS running on the miniscule computers seems like a match made in computing heaven (or at least better than the bloated Windows or unusable (for newbies) Linux. And Android netbooks are certainly coming soon. Dell, for example, is planning
class=”snap_preview_icon”> to release their own Android-equipped device. But Google CEO Eric Schmidt has his eye on another prize: the cloud. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/07/eric-schmidt-on-netbooks-forget-android-its-all-about-cloud-services/ 5/7)
UHU,![clip_image002[1]](http://dailymarauder.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/clip_image0021.gif?w=1&h=1 "clip_image002[1]"){kind=small}
class=”snap_preview_icon”> a startup that produces virtual avatars and identity cards and rich media web widgets, has secured $6.25 million in Series B funding from The Acer Group![clip_image002[2]](http://dailymarauder.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/clip_image0022.gif?w=1&h=1 "clip_image002[2]"){kind=small}
class=”snap_preview_icon”> (which produces Acer,![clip_image002[3]](http://dailymarauder.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/clip_image0023.gif?w=1&h=1 "clip_image002[3]"){kind=small}
class=”snap_preview_icon”> Gateway,![clip_image002[4]](http://dailymarauder.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/clip_image0024.gif?w=1&h=1 "clip_image002[4]"){kind=small}
eMachines and Packard Bell computers). FUHU also signed a 10 year contract to distribute FUHU products in all Acer computers and smart mobile phones. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/07/avatar-startup-fuhu-raises-625-million-strikes-deal-with-acer-to-put-widgets-in-pcs/ 5/7)
As part of Microsoft’s previously announced plan to trim its employee rolls about 5,000 people, the company laid off about 3,000 workers Tuesday — with 1,200 coming from the company headquarters in Redmond, Wash. — in its second round of cuts. “While job eliminations are always difficult,” a Microsoft official said, “we are taking these necessary actions in response to the global economic downturn.” 
ClipSyndicate (5/5) , The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones Newswires (5/5) , Computerworld (5/5)
Sales of stand-alone Blu-ray disc players were more than 400,000 units in the first three months of the year, a 72% increase over the comparable period in 2008, according to a new study from research firm NPD Group. Declining prices for the players and an increasing number of HDTV owners were credited with the growing consumer uptake. PC World (5/6) , Dealerscope (5/7) , The Hollywood Reporter (5/6)
