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Sunday, November 22, 2009

Here’s a First: Man Arrested For Not Using Twitter

bieber mallPolice charge a record company executive who didn’t use the service to break up a near-riot of teenage girls at a Long Island mall.

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Saturday, November 21, 2009

Another (Loud, Fuzzy) Peek at Wired’s Tablet Edition

tablet wired storeWant to see Conde Nast’s not-so-secret plans to produce tablet-friendly editions of its magazines? Get yourself to New York’s Meatpacking District. Or check out this grainy YouTube clip.

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Friday, November 20, 2009

YouTube Says Popcorn Hour Is Over

who_burnt_the_popcorn_tshirt-p2356393958797797463yta_210

Want to watch YouTube on your TV? There are plenty of devices and services that let you do that, with more on the way. But starting next month, at least one gadget is getting its YouTube feed shut down: Syabas, which makes a line of set-top boxes called “Popcorn Hour,” says Google’s video site has told it to remove YouTube content from its offering beginning December 2.

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Why Broadcast TV Won’t Miss Oprah

oprahYou can debate whether Oprah Winfrey’s plans to shut down her broadcast show–in 2011–and move to cable constitutes “news.” Ditto for what it means for the culture.

But what do Oprah’s plans mean for the TV business? Not that much, argues JP Morgan analyst Michael Meltz.

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Consumers: We Don’t Absolutely Hate Mobile Ads

phone boothHere’s your half-empty/half-full stat for the day: Four in 10 consumers don’t want to see ads on their phones. Is that good or bad for the nascent mobile ad business?

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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Can Adobe and Apple Play Nicely When–And If–The Tablet Shows Up?

kid fight

Adobe is preparing to put magazines on Apple’s purported wondertablet. But what if that device, like Apple’s iPhone, doesn’t want to work with Adobe?

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How to See a Handball: Watch France Cheat Its Way Into the World Cup

thierry henry france soccerIn the U.S., this is no big deal, but in much of the world this is now the sports equivalent of the Zapruder film: French soccer star Thierry Henry cheating, via a handball, and propelling his team past Ireland and into next year’s World Cup.

The Web is full of chatter about yesterday’s game, but video is hard to come by: YouTube has shut down most of the clips. But dedicated searchers–and there are lots of them right now–can find them.

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AOL: We Need to Fire 2,500 “Volunteers”

tim_armstrong_lgAOL, which has already told investors it will spend up to $200 million firing a good chunk of its staff, has now told employees. The company is looking for “up to 2,500 volunteers,” CEO Tim Armstrong told his staff today. That’s a third of AOL’s payroll.

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Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Done Deal: MySpace Buys Imeem for Up to $10 Million

dark-knight-burningIt’s official: MySpace has closed on its acquisition of Imeem, the streaming music service. It is paying a fire-sale price of $1 million, sources familiar with the situation tell me, and could pay up to $7 million to $9 million in earn-outs for key employees, who will likely include CEO Dalton Caldwell. Investors like Sequoia and Warner Music Group had pumped at least $25 million into the venture.

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Court Kills Preposterous Pirate Beatles Site

beatlesforsaleIt’s official: You still can’t buy the Beatles’ songs on the Web, despite the efforts of a site that attempted to do so by rewriting copyright law on the fly. In other news: Have you seen this clip of Richard Pryor reading the alphabet on Sesame Street? Awesome.

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Vevo, Big Music’s Hulu, Launches Dec. 8

vevo-logoVevo, the music industry’s attempt to create a Hulu-like site for its music videos, will formally launch Dec. 8. The site, which is co-owned by Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, Sony’s music label and Abu Dhabi Media, will host a New York kick-off event that day.

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Condé Nast’s Offering for Apple’s Mystery Tablet: Wired Magazine

cover_wired_190Here’s yet another content creator that’s convinced Apple has a tablet device in the works: Condé Nast says it will have a digital version of Wired magazine ready for the purported gadget by the middle of next year and will eventually create similar versions for all of its 18 titles.

But Condé, like other publishers, says Apple won’t actually talk to the company about its plans for the device–or even acknowledge that it has plans.

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A Few Tunes for Hulu: Here’s Norah Jones

norah jonesHere’s a match up that makes plenty of sense: EMI Music Group, which has a new Norah Jones album to promote, is showing her videos on Hulu, the video joint venture that specializes in “premium” content. But the deal is the only one of its kind. While the big music labels have played footsie with Hulu in the past, they have yet to actually move any of their clips there. Instead, they’re concentrating on YouTube, which makes plenty of sense.

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Tuesday, November 17, 2009

When Will Warner Music Group Finally Buy EMI?

life preserverAre Warner Music Group and EMI, which have been circling each other for nearly a decade, finally ready to consummate their relationship?

That’s the obvious question in light of news that both Terra Firma, the private equity group that bought EMI in 2007, and Citigroup, which funded most of that transaction, have written down most of their investments in the music company.

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Confirmed: MySpace Looking to Buy Imeem

victrolaGoing, going, gone: The last of the Web 2.0 music services are dwindling away. The latest is Imeem, which is in the process of being purchased by MySpace, I’ve confirmed.

Haven’t heard a price yet, but I wouldn’t expect much, given that this deal, like the iLike purchase MySpace made earlier this year, is an “acqhire”–News Corp.’s social network/portal wants to buy Imeem for its “sales team, engineering, Snocap and other Imeem IP,” a person familiar with the transaction tells me.

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Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »

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