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News from Microsoft was expected Sunday night.  It was the moment  of Bill Gates  eleventh, and final,  keynote address to open the Consumer Electronics Show. The stage was set.  It was the Super Bowl of Entertainment and Technology convergence.  A time for news.  A time for Bill.

CES has been for Bill Gates  what Macworld has been for Steve Jobs.  In past efforts – the CES keynote has been a night for him to climb on stage and issue a “State of the Union,” a chance to sing Microsoft’s praises, to plug their products,  a chance to predict the future.  It’s always a night of a little humor, of celebrity appearances and geek idols – a moment in the spotlight with all the glitz, multimedia  and professional production a corporate event can withstand.   Sunday, all expected points were covered.

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Another casualty of restrictive formatting choices and a lack of portability, Wal-Mart has quietly shuttered its video download store a year after opening it.

A message on the site indicates the service was stopped December 21st.  There was no public death announcement.  HP had previously decided to discontinue the merchant service that powered the Wal-Mart store after determining that their video download merchant store services weren’t performing. Wal-Mart, apparently, drew the same conclusion.  Click to Read More

In the technology industry there are nearly as many rumors and reports speculating about Apple and their products as there are gossip headlines about Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton.   One of the most common iTunes related news grabbers has been movie rentals, or speculation thereabout.   Now, it’s grabbed the wires again.

The Financial Times is reporting Apple is close to announcing a deal with Fox that will give Apple the rights to offer movie rentals through the iTunes digital store at some time in 2008. 

Some are speculating the story underlies a renewed push for Apple’s “hobby project,” Apple TV.   Alternate theories push a video strategy as a means of supporting Apple’s now almost entirely video enabled consumer product line (only the iPod shuffle doesn’t support video).

Apple has not made any statements about such a video offering and this is not the first times the Financial Times has run with a story focused on the concept that proved premature.  Click to Read More

Employees at San Francisco based PlayFirst and Palo Alto based Vuze  should all enter the holiday period smiling and reassured.  Wednesday, both the Casual Gamer and IPTV startups closed substantial Series C Financings.

•PlayFirst
For PlayFirst, the deal brought $16.5m of holiday cheer.  DCM led the round and existing investors including Mayfield Fund, Trinity Ventures and Rustic Canyon Partners also participated.   Including prior rounds, the new investment brings the cumulative investment in PlayFirst to $26.5m

PlayFirst was founded in 2004.   They were one of the first gaming companies Click to Read More

The last days of Viacom’s advertising partnership with DoubleClick were long ago foretold.  With Viacom still feuding with Google over YouTube and copyrights, and with Google’s purchase of DoubleClick likely nearing the end of regulatory review, it was just a matter of time.  Wednesday the hammer dropped and Viacom pledged its allegiance to Microsoft.

In a five year deal worth at least $500m in exchanged value, Microsoft and the media giant behind MTV Networks, Nickelodeon and Paramount pictures reached a complex advertising and content distribution deal.

Under the pact, Microsoft will license Viacom content (non-exclusively) for use on both Microsoft web properties and for the Xbox 360.

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In November 2005, Internet video syndication and platform service operator Brightcove closed a $16.2m Series B Financing round. Interactive Corp, which counts Ticketmaster, Citysearch and Ask among its properties was one of the lead investors. As part of the transaction, IAC’s CEO Barry Diller joined the board of directors. Now a few years have passed and the companies have decided to get more involved with each other.

Under a deal announced today, Brightcove will provide tools for publishing video content to web, managing video syndication and integrating advertising too all IAC businesses. Financial terms were not disclosed.

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Score one for Ticketmaster.  In the ongoing battle to gain footing in secondary ticket markets, Ticketmaster has inked a high profile deal with the NFL to handle league sponsored resales.

The new service, named the NFL Ticket Exchange, will be hosted by Ticketmaster (Interactive Corp) and accessible from NFL licensed websites including NFL.com.  The site will go live in time for the 2008 season.  Both the NFL and Ticketmaster will jointly promote and market the offering.

Ticketmaster already hosted ticket exchange services for 18 of the 32 teams in the NFL.  The newly signed deal will expand the reach to the entire league.

Ticketmaster’s strategy of securing tickets by partnership follows a similar effort employed by more established secondary sellers Stubhub Click to Read More