Time Warner restructuring could involve dividing AOL
Time Warner's new Chief Executive Officer announced the outline for AOL's restructuring, which may include divesting from the AOL access business, Time Warner cable unit, and even New Line Cinema.
In the company's quarterly earnings call this morning, newly appointed president and CEO of Time Warner Inc. Jeff Bewkes stressed the importance of increasing profitability by improving cost management across the company. In addition to a vaguely described 15% cost cut at the corporate level, Bewkes' team is working on a plan that would divide AOL's subscriber unit from its audience unit.
A very virtually realistic Times Square comes to a real MMORPG
Multiverse, founded by ex-Netscape employees in 2004, is one of several massively multi-player online games that seeks to develop an economic structure in virtual space. The company has created in its virtual world a version of Times Square, arguably the real-life ad space mecca.
Times Square has over 40 million unique visitors annually, who take approximately 100 million photographs. Advertising Age estimates the billboard value of Times Square alone at $69 million. Add into that the as-of-yet unquantifiable value of tourist-aggregated advertising -- Bystander videos of a Target publicity stunt in Times Square got as many as 19,300 views on YouTube -- and the New York City location becomes more of an advertising ecosystem.
LG's Viewty handset records straight to DivX
It's not just for short, tight Web videos anymore. LG Mobile's popular Viewty handset has just become the first mobile phone to be certified for recording video using DivX compression.
The list of DivX certified devices continues to grow, but the list of mobile phones is still decidedly brief. The other handsets certified to support DivX, both made by Samsung -- the SGH-F500 and SGH-F508 -- only support DivX playback.
Microsoft's latest environmental contribution: a mouse with a switch
Microsoft has announced a new "green" wireless mouse, with such environmentally-minded features as...an on/off switch.
The Redmond company is gently marketing its new Wireless Laser Mouse 7000 today as being environmentally friendly due to its six-month battery life. This, according to Microsoft, will amount to an 80% reduction in battery consumption over a three-year period
Repairs begin to critical undersea data cables
Two of the four undersea cables that provide data to much of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia which were severed late last week are now undergoing repair.
Reuters reported today that FALCON, the third of the cables to be cut on Friday evening, is currently being repaired. FLAG telecom's repair team was at first delayed in Abu Dhabi, UAE due to untoward weather, but has since managed to lay anchor at the break site despite what the group called "extreme weather conditions."
Nokia brings back N-Gage, opens social network
Today, handset manufacturer Nokia began the rollout of its revised N-Gage gaming service and its new Share on Ovi media sharing site.
After several delays due to numerous software issues, Nokia's N-Gage gaming platform has begun its rollout with "First Access" being granted to N-81 owners. Users of that particular handset have access to a pre-release version of the N-Gage application and four games, including: Hooked On: Creatures of the Deep, Space Impact: Kappa Base, Block Breaker Deluxe, and System Rush: Evolution.
Yahoo's Zimbra e-mail server gets an update, at least for now
Yahoo has updated its open source collaboration server software, Zimbra, now including Blackberry support and Yahoo Maps and search integration. However, if Microsoft acquires Yahoo, will this be the last update we see for Zimbra?
Zimbra is an open source solution that acts as an alternative to Microsoft Exchange Server, supporting e-mail, calendaring, contacts, tasks, and more. The software was acquired last September by Yahoo in an acquisition valued at $350 million.
ICANN considers fast track for some international TLDs
ICANN has proposed a schedule for the fast-tracking of non-contentious IDN ccTLDs that would allow for new non-Latin Alphabet top-level domains as early as Summer '08.
An internationalized domain name (IDN) will take a Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD), or the ".country" name, and allow it to be displayed in non-ASCII characters. This will open the the current ISO 3166-1 standard of domain naming to beyond the 37 current characters. Countries not on the QWERTY or DVORAK keyboard standard have demanded this ability for a long time.
Study: Digital mobile TV could become a $9.1 billion industry
A National Association of Broadcasters study contends that mobile digital television has the potential to become a multi-billion-dollar annual industry in America...but only if the standardization process is resolved by February 2009.
Each month the establishment of a standard is delayed, the study asserts, could cost broadcasters $50 million in revenue, and over $200 million in value to mobile digital broadcasting overall. The $9.1 B incremental market value in the study comes from the $2 billion in advertising revenue adjusted by $1.1 billion which would be accrued by participating broadcasters.
ICANN finally begins updated IP standard rollout
Today, the non-profit organization in charge of the Internet's fundamental naming structure finally began migrating its root servers to IP version 6.
ICANN today is finally beginning the long, and perhaps arduous, process of upgrading its root servers to incorporate IPv6 records. Though the updated protocol has been in the post-development phase for over ten years, it has seen very limited uptake outside of the enterprise sector.
AOL buys its way into the widget business
Time Warner's AOL has acquired Goowy, San Diego-based flash widget startup for an undisclosed sum. Widgetized versions of AOL properties could be the next step for the dinosaur ISP.
AOL as an ISP has been on the decline for years, but has been taking measures to establish itself as a stronger player in the advertising market.
Submarine data routes in crisis
Day two of the Eastern hemisphere's widespread Internet outage has seen an incremental worsening of the situation as another submarine cable is severed.
Today, another Flag Telecom cable, known as FALCON, was reported to have snapped, this time some 35 miles (56 km) off the coast of Dubai. FALCON was the first privately-owned multi-terabit cable to reach the west coast of India, celebrating its completion in 2005.
Nine-hour network outage cripples AT&T mobile data traffic
Beginning at around 5:30 EST on Thursday, AT&T's EDGE and UMTS data networks went down for reasons even now unknown to company technicians.
AT&T has not reported what the cause of the outage was, or even how many customers were affected. Message boards tracking user complaints counted 18 states among those suffering from lost 2.5/3G connectivity. These states were: Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Indiana, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nevada, New York, Wisconsin, and Illinois.
A potential buyer for Motorola's mobile division: Ericsson
Sony Ericsson has recently been trailing behind competitors Nokia, Samsung, and Motorola in sales, but with Motorola's recent announcement of mobile business restructuring, its co-parent Ericsson is considering an uncharacteristic move.
Ericsson's company strategy has never been to seek out acquisitions and deals, but rather to focus on R&D and "organic growth." But with a new president, Hideki Komiyama, for its Sony Ericsson division jointly owned with Sony, Ericsson could be poised to move in a new direction. Komiyama recently told Reuters that the company would be giving higher priority to North America and higher-income consumers in emerging markets in 2008.
TiVo's revolution in audience measurement snags CBS
CBS Corporation has announced it will enter into a partnership with TiVo, utilizing the DVR pioneer's Stop||Watch viewer metric.
TiVo's Stop||Watch service is a second-by-second system, which is used to measure program and advertisement ratings for both live and time shifted DVR viewing. It was the first company to use such a comprehensive system, and major network NBC began using Stop||Watch earlier this year.
Tim's Bio
Tim Conneally was born into dumpster tech. His father was an ARPANET research pioneer and equipped his kids with discarded tech gear, second-hand musical instruments, and government issue foreign language instruction tapes. After years of building Frankenstein computers from rubbish and playing raucous music in clubs across the country (and briefly on MTV) Tim grew into an adult with deep, twisted roots and an eye on the future. He most passionately covers mobile technology, user interfaces and applications, the science and policy of the wireless world, and watching different technologies shrink and converge.
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