Seth Gilbert, 01-29-2008
Forget about “what have you done for me lately” (though that can’t be neglected); in these turbulent markets what matters more is “what are you going to do for me next.” Wall Street made that painfully clear when Apple released record earnings last week but was cautious in their forward guidance. After Tuesday’s close of market, Yahoo received a similar message. It was a little less blunt, the consequences a little less severe, but then, with Yahoo nobody had built up expectations to walk away impressed.
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Seth Gilbert, 01-23-2008
Two million bloggers reaching more than 114million unique visitors and now, $29.5m in cash. That’s the amount of money software company Automattic, the developer behind the popular open source blogging platform and the wordpress.com hosted community has raised in a Series B financing.
The round was led by existing investors Polaris Venture Partners, True Ventures and Radar Partners. The New York Times, which runs a number of blogs on the software, also invested.
Automattic is best known for developing the Wordpress publishing platform Click to Read More
Seth Gilbert, 01-22-2008
There’s been a new sheriff in town at Electronic Arts since John Riccitiello rode back in to EA about a year ago. His campaign promise was change. Slowly, he’s making good on that pledge. In June, he reorganized management into a more accountable hierarchy and he recruited Activision’s former publishing president Kathy Vrabeck. In July, EA signed a high profile in-game ad deal and Microsoft’s Xbox VP Peter Moore joined the team. In August, they signed a deal with Hasbro. In October, more than $600m was dished out to acquire Bioware and Pandemic. It’s now a New Year and time for more new beginnings.
On Monday, EA announced the latest installment of popular PC game Battlefield 1942, Battlefield Heroes, will bypass retail. Instead, the new installment of the franchise (which has sold more than 10m units) will be re-invented later this year as a free online multiplayer game. In its new incarnation, the game will be supported by an experimental combination of advertising and micro-transactions. It’s a first for EA in western markets.
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Seth Gilbert, 01-21-2008
Time Warner’s HBO unit has created some of the most original programming on television over the past decade but efforts to make the programming available online have been snagged in the webs of legal contracts. As a subscription service, HBO’s distribution agreements with cable and satellite providers stand in the way. That remains a problem but Tuesday, HBO is set to try again.
Their new service, called “HBO on Broadband” will provide access to about 400 hours of programming a month. The full library of HBO content will not be available. Also, only existing subscribers to HBO’s TV programming will be able to participate.
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Seth Gilbert,
New years seem to start with a tempered excitement. As a symbolic beginning, we’re prone to look ahead anxious of the unknown. As a symbolic end, we’re drawn to look back and take inventory of what has passed. Where have we been? What have we done? And, most of all, where are we going?
In the mix, the glass is neither half full nor half empty. In the beginning of a new year, it is just there with some liquid in it open to all voices to call it what they will. Looking back is a means of measuring where momentum is taking us. Corporate earnings, personal achievements (or faults), annualized statistics: all numbers and quantities to set benchmarks and goals.
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Seth Gilbert, 01-17-2008
Building successful companies from the seed of a startup is usually a long process, one of those things characterized as “more of a marathon than a sprint.” Joost, and some of their Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) competitors got off to a very fast start, maybe too fast.
It was revealed Thursday that Joost’s CTO Dirk-Willem van Gulik is the leaving the startup next month to become Chief Technical Architect for the BBC. He’ll work on their sites and likely, Project Kangaroo.
The change may be nothing more than the attrition of a volatile market (tech talent is always in demand). On the other hand, taking into account the similar departure of rival Babelgum’s CTO in November, it may indicate the honeymoon is starting to end for some IPTV companies.
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Seth Gilbert,
It’s hard to think of a two hundred year old institution as forward thinking but in many ways that’s what the Library of Congress is and (set out to be). It’s not just the Library for Congress and the government; it’s the repository for copyright protections, an archive of 30 million books, hundreds of years of newspapers, enough shelf space to span 530 miles.
It’s no small job keeping 130 million items organized and accessible. It takes a staff of more than 5,000 on a budget of more than $300m to keep the gears turning. To keep it efficient, it takes all the technological resources possible. Wednesday, the library’s staff announced they’d decided those resources should include Yahoo’s online photo sharing community: Flickr. They also decided that it would be a good idea to let “the crowd” help out with the process. A library of the people, for the people and now … by the people.
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