If Verizon is in talks with Apple to become the second U.S. carrier for the iPhone, they evidently aren’t going very well. How else to explain the iPhone-slagging ad campaign for Verizon’s forthcoming Android handset, Droid?
Took ’em long enough. After weeks of rumor and speculation, Walt Disney Co. has finally taken a stake in Hulu, the video-streaming site operated by NBC Universal, News Corporation and Providence Equity Partners. Financial terms and the structure of the deal weren’t disclosed, but sources say Disney’s stake in the venture will be 27 percent.
Technically, the term refers to the frenzied flow of games and the intensity of the contenders for the NCAA Championship crown. But the NCAA doesn’t have a corner on “March Madness”–those descriptors work well in other instances, too. To wit:
This weekend, AllThingsD.com is distributing awards for Best Performance in a ToS Slapdown, Fastest Disappearing Subscriber Base, and Best Conference to Attend in February If It’s Cold Where You Live. If all involved keep their remarks on topic, things should move along quickly.
Beyond the wet-your-pants whipsawing of the financial markets, the week ending Oct. 17, 2008, was one in which Apple figured prominently. On Tuesday, the company unveiled revisions to its MacBook Pro, MacBook and MacBook Air portables–as well as its new LED Cinema Display. It also issued a Steve Jobs health update: The Apple CEO’s blood pressure is 110/70.
Not only is iTunes the world’s largest music retailer, it’s apparently also the world’s most popular online TV store. This according to proprietor Apple, which said today that iTunes has sold some 200 million TV episodes.
YouTube is finally expanding its catalog of long-form video beyond the “This video has been removed due to terms of use violation” notice that so often appears in lieu of network video content. A newly-inked deal with CBS in hand, the video site has begun offering full-length episodes of TV series like “Dexter,” “Californication,” “MacGyver” and “Star Trek” alongside YouTube staples like “Cat Falls in Toilet” and “Kicked in the Nuts.”
Looks like Netflix’s video-streaming business is developing quite nicely. On Tuesday the DVD-by-mail pioneer said it has signed deals with CBS and Walt Disney that will add some of those networks’ most popular shows to the Netflix streaming library.
How ironic. The personal data of some Google employees may be as “universally accessible” as the world of information Google claims it is its mission to organize.
Yahoo is unsealing new advertising deals nearly as quickly as that Delaware court is unsealing the “unflattering” details of the company’s failed merger talks with Microsoft. During her keynote at the Advertising 2.0 conference in New York today, Yahoo President Sue Decker announced a handful of new advertising partnerships.
“The Stars’ Address is CBS.” And now it’s CNET Networks’ as well. CBS this morning said it agreed to buy the Internet news and entertainment company for $1.8-billion in cash. The deal values CNET at about $11.50 per share–a 44.6% premium to yesterday’s closing price of $7.95. That’s $.50 more than the $11 Jana Partners, the investment management firm plotting a proxy fight for control of the company’s board, had hoped to squeeze out of CNET, so presumably even dissident investors are glad to see CBS stepping in here.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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