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Macworld has been going on since 1985, the same year Steve Jobs resigned from Apple.   Since  1997, the year he came back, Apple has used the show as a springboard to introduce new products and as a pulpit for Steve to evangelize. 

In 1998, Jobs took to the stage to introduce the iMac.  In 2001, he enthusiastically showed iTunes and Apple’s first widescreen notebook.  In 2005, it was the Mac Mini and the iPod Shuffle.  Two years ago, in 2007, the iPhone took the spotlight.  Last year, it was the Macbook Air.    

Tomorrow, a new page will turn.  It will be Apple’s last year at the event (Apple announced they were pulling out of Macworld in December) and Steve Jobs won’t be giving the keynote.  Marketing exec. Phil Schiller will do it instead.   No one’s sure what the changes mean.  Will Apple quietly part ways with the independently run Macworld show? Or will the company say goodbye blazing with a surprise announcement of something new and unexpected?

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If you missed the headlines, Warner Music Group, the first of the Big 4 record labels to partner with YouTube has pulled off the site.  Accounts and press releases differ over culpability – whether YouTube bailed or Warner Music punted – but the material fact is the same.  From Bad Company to the B-52’s, James Blunt to Jane’s Addiction, the videos are down.  The reason is simple: money.

For several months, the two companies have been trying to renegotiate their expired license agreement.   Under the prior terms, its reported that Warner received either a fraction of a cent per video play or a share of any ad revenue generated alongside their content, whichever was greater. 

Neither, it turns out, was great enough. According to the New York Times, in 2008 less than one percent of Warner’s $639m in digital revenues came from YouTube; that despite the fact that music videos are among the most watched content on the site. 

According to Ad Age “Forty-seven of the top 100 most-watched creators on YouTube are musicians or labels.”

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Google’s library is growing.  In addition to serving as the card catalog for the ever-changing mass of digital content on the net, the search giant’s archived rare books and snagged Life Magazine’s photo catalog. They’re also now playing host to a collection of magazine back issues – full spreads, not just links.  

So far, Google has quietly made copies of more than one million articles.    According to a company blog, this is part of a broader initiative to bring more magazine archives and current stock online.  According to Google financials, it may serve another purpose too.

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The deceleration of the economy and the utter implosion of both the banking and auto industries has officially tipped the dominoes of misfortune to the media industry.  The flow of advertising dollars has shrunk.  Car dealerships are spending less to promote their products.  Banks are buying fewer ads. Historically big spenders aren’t spending. Even celebrity endorsements are falling victim.   So…this year,  instead of holiday bonuses, many tech and media companies are handing out pink slips.  

It’s hard to say whether all the cash conservation and restructuring is truly necessary or if some is just opportunistically timed to squeeze the write-offs and one-time charges into 2008 fiscal year accounting.  For a lot of people, that’s irrelevant.  This season’s greetings are anything but cheery.

Today, it was  media giant Viacom that lowered the hatchet. The parent of MTV Networks, Paramount, BET and Nickelodeon, announced a workforce reduction of approximately 7%, or 850 jobs. Click to Read More

In the U.S. NBC Universal and News Corp’s joint video on demand service, Hulu, has proven to be a big success, drawing both audience (Quantcast data) and advertisers.  In the U.K., BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 had hoped to follow a similar path with their own web service, Project Kangaroo (also known as UKVOD).  Their route now looks complicated, if not potentially impassable.

Wednesday, after a prolonged review, the U.K antitrust authority, the Competition Commission (“CC”) issued a provisional finding that the joint venture would unfairly restrict competition. Specifically, the CC believes, as currently defined, Project Kangaroo will lessen essential competition in the supply of UK TV Video on Demand programming.

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In March, venture firm Kleiner Perkins allocated up to $100m for an iPhone related investment initiative and provided an online form to allow open submissions from prospective entrepreneurs.  Thanks to an error, some of these entries were recently exposed to the public.  The mistake opened a brief but unintended window into the kinds of proposals that have been submitted.

The cause of the leak was apparently KPCB’s  former web hosting company Meteora Technologies Group.  At some point in time, an employee accidentally posted a SQL file to the web that contained 588 proposals submitted through KPCB’s online iFund submission form.

According to Tech Crunch, which first got the story, Mac developer Fruxx discovered the error and alerted Kleiner Perkins.  The file was removed but not before Google’s ever efficient spiders indexed the page and copied a portion of it into their storage cache.

While it was available, the SQL file, which was readable with any text editor/reader, provided detailed information Click to Read More

Next  to Jerry Yang, Steve Ballmer and Carl Icahn, few names have been mentioned more frequently in Yahoo’s ongoing survival story than Jon Miller.  The partner at Velocity Interactive, and former AOL chief (2002 to 2006) was mentioned as an adviser in the failed Micro-hoo combination.  In Carl Icahn’s proxy fight he was expected to be a Yahoo board appointee until blocked by a non-compete.  Presently, he’s among the leading candidates in the press to assume the Yahoo CEO position.   And now, he’s also rumored to be a buyer.

The Wall Street Journal, citing sources “familiar with the matter,” is reporting Jon has been “sounding out” private equity and sovereign wealth funds for months, all in an effort to raise a buyout fund to takeover Yahoo.

The deal being pitched, the WSJ story writes, is a potential acquisition in the rage of $20 to $22 a share.

Is Jon Miller really looking to assemble as much as $30 billion in this market to acquire Yahoo?

It’s certainly possible.  Any rumor that passes through the editorial filters and finds its way onto the pages of A-list publications like the WSJ usually has to pass the sniff tests of plausibility.  Even so, plausible and probable are sometimes far apart….like here.

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