Why CNET? Because in addition to original articles written by staff journalists, Travora wants to offer a sort of buyer’s guide to travel, with various widgets and doodads built into its site that help people look up local weather, get lists of apps relevant to a destination and convert currency and timezones without leaving the page.

Like many travel sites, Travora’s content is centered on major cities, so don’t go looking for the long tail. There are also limited social features besides sharing out to existing networks, and no mobile app version just yet.

Forte, a former WebMD exec, said her goal is to provide “snackable” and accessible media about destinations and travel in general. And Travora Media, which is backed by investors including Rho Capital Ventures and Village Ventures, will continue to run as a travel ad network separate from Travora.com.

Another fresh travel news site we recently covered is paidContent founder Rafat Ali’s Skift.

Photo via Eric Grant on Twitter/Instagram

But CNET’s Greg Sandoval said that the handful of folks in line just after midnight on Sunday seemed more motivated by publicity than a slimmer phone that can read out sports scores.

Which makes sense, because if they’re willing to put in a week’s worth of camping out on a city sidewalk, they probably could have mustered the effort to preorder in the middle of the night.

Analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray had estimated sales of six million to 10 million iPhone 5s in the first week, and that was back at the beginning of the month, when the device was still just a (substantially leaked) figment of Apple lovers’ imaginations.

Apple is taking an aggressive global rollout schedule for the iPhone 5, and said on Friday that it was “completely blown away” by the volume of overnight preorders. Shipping-time estimates were pushed back just an hour after the iPhone 5 became available online.

The opportunistic start-up TaskRabbit is offering a service where its errand runners will wait in line for four hours for $55 at New York City and San Francisco Bay Area stores on Friday morning.

The Apple-Samsung trial surely helped some people view Apple in a negative light. But it’s not as if Samsung is some cute underdog puppy, looking up at you with eyes that plead for a cookie.

– Chris Matyszczyk, in a CNET article entitled “Did Samsung Verdict Hurt Apple’s Reputation?”

CNET nabbed an exclusive interview with one of the nine jurors in the high-profile and complex trial.

The jury largely handed over a victory to Apple in the patent infringement case, along with an award of just over $1 billion.

Manuel Ilagan — who said debates among jurors were at times “heated,” in spite of the quickness of the verdict — told CNET that “Samsung’s internal emails about incorporating some of Apple’s technology into its devices, and the evasive way Samsung executives answered questions, was damning.”

Ilagan also denied that the jury was favoring Apple in any kind of “hometown bias.”

“We weren’t going for Apple,” he told CNET. “We weren’t thinking Apple or Samsung.”

The interview is well worth a full read here.

Reuters also talked to another key juror, foreman Velvin Hogan, about making sure Samsung knew it had done wrong.

Hogan, who holds a patent himself, said the jury “wanted to make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist. We wanted to make sure it was sufficiently high to be painful, but not unreasonable.”

Apple versus Samsung Full Coverage

The founder and chairman of eHarmony, Dr. Neil Clark Warren, is returning to the job of CEO at the well-known and oftimes controversial matchmaking site, according to an internal memo I obtained.

He replaces Jeremy Verba, the former Zynga exec who was named to the job a year ago at the Southern California-based eHarmony.

Prior to Zynga, Verba was president and CEO for online teen community Piczo and he also had worked at AOL and CNET.

It’s not clear why the sudden breakup at the dating service — whose motto is, “Fall in love for all the right reasons” — but in the memo Verba sent to staff today, he noted:

“The Company’s Board and I agreed upon this mutual separation on Friday. Our visions of the future of the business are not entirely aligned and we decided that this step is the best course of action.”

I get it: Not compatible.

The company recently lost its CTO, Joseph Essas, to OpenTable.

Verba had no comment when I contacted him.

Here’s the full Verba memo:

To the eHarmony Team:

I wanted to announce to you that I am leaving eHarmony Inc. The Company’s Board and I agreed upon this mutual separation on Friday. Our visions of the future of the business are not entirely aligned and we decided that this step is the best course of action. Dr. Neil Warren, eHarmony’s Chairman, has assumed the CEO role and will be outlining more details concerning the path forward very soon.

I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished in the time that I’ve been here. We have a site redesign in beta and improving every day; we are on our way to a new creative campaign scheduled to launch later this quarter; our mobile apps and development continue to evolve and capture more share of our users’ time; we continue to diversify our acquisition channels (mobile, social, digital video); and we’ve both welcomed several new executives to the company and promoted several from within the ranks.

This is a great team of people, driven by a belief in the mission laid out by Dr. Warren many years ago to reduce the divorce rate in America and create more love in the world. Our recent research studies have shown that we are succeeding at that and much more.

I have confidence in your abilities and future success. I wish you all the best and thank you for a great year.

Jeremy

PS. Going forward, I can be reached via FB or LinkedIn. I look forward to staying in touch.

For those who don’t know him, Sree — @sree on Twitter — is Sreenath Sreenivasan, who, during the 15 years I’ve known him, has been a hyperconnected, seemingly permanent fixture at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. (Full disclosure: I’m a graduate of the school, and was a student of Sree’s 15 years ago.) Having graduated from the school himself in 1993, he simply never left. Some 19 years later, as a professor, he has taught most subjects in the curriculum at least once, and spent the last seven years holding the title Dean of something or other: Most recently it has been Dean of Student Affairs.

Aside from his academic duties, he always found the time and energy to keep a foot in the media game. When I first met him, he was teaching a full course load and was a regular contributor to the New York Times Business section, and had just wrapped a gig as a freelance producer for “The Nightly Business Report” on PBS. He’s been a tech commentator for New York’s local TV news broadcasts, most recently for WCBS; he blogs on social media for CNET, does his own weekly Web-based call-in show on BlogTalkRadio, and teaches workshops for midcareer professionals of every stripe who are trying to get their heads around how to use Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn productively. He also co-founded the South Asian Journalists Association. And when this tornado named Sree finally stops whirling, he’s always got time for any student. The sign on the door to his office reads: “Yes you can bug me” “Don’t worry, you’re NOT interrupting.”

So it will probably come as a bit of a shock to anyone who has passed through the J-School’s halls during the last two decades that Sree is leaving, though he’s not going far. Today, Columbia appointed him its first Chief Digital Officer. It’s a new academic position in the office of the Provost John Coatsworth (the university’s highest academic officer), focusing on driving online education initiatives.

Columbia, like every other major university in the world, is trying to figure out how best to deliver its courses via the Web. It’s a weighty subject, covered in detail in a session with Stanford University President John Hennessy and Khan Academy’s Salman Khan at D:All Things Digital last month.

If now is the time for digital education to start having the impact that it’s going to have, Sree will be one of the people setting its agenda at Columbia. And yes, most people will still just call him Sree.

The memo announcing Sree’s new job is below:

Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2012 5:01 PM
Subject: Sree Sreenivasan appointed Chief Digital Officer, Office of the Provost

Dear Colleagues,

I am very pleased to announce that I have appointed Sree Sreenivasan as Columbia University’s first Chief Digital Officer. Sree, who was previously Dean of Student Affairs at Columbia’s School of Journalism, joins the Office of the Provost effective immediately.

Sree’s portfolio will cover a broad range of issues at the intersection of technology, education, and digital media. His primary responsibility will be to lead the development of a coordinated university-wide strategy in response to the quickening pace of change in online education and digital media.

This effort will focus on supporting the innovative and exciting distance learning programs run by the School of Continuing Education, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and other academic units, as well as facilitating efforts by other schools at Columbia that want to develop an online curricular presence. At the same time, this effort aims to make the most effective use of Columbia’s academic and financial resources, and incentivize collaboration and the adoption of effective practices across campus. The goal is to ensure that we deploy new tools and technologies in interactive and distance learning to ensure the richest and most dynamic learning environment possible for Columbia’s students.

Sree will work closely with schools, centers, and academic departments, as well as our existing digital development groups such as Columbia’s Center for New Media Teaching and Learning. In addition to his focus on online education, Sree will provide advisory services and programs to schools, faculty and administrators on digital technology and social media, working closely with our Office of Communications and Public Affairs to highlight areas of University leadership. (The role does not affect our existing information technology operations within the division of Student and Administrative Services.)

Sree has spent 20 years on Morningside Heights: one earning his M.S. at the Journalism School and another 19 as a professor, including seven as a dean. Most recently, he was the Journalism School’s Dean of Student Affairs, supervising admissions, student service/life and career services. All the while, he was an active member of the faculty, teaching digital journalism and social media; he will continue to be on the faculty, occasionally teaching there.

He has partnered with many departments across campus, serving as a sounding board, guest speaker, informal consultant and more. Among the honors Sree has received are being named to several lists of digital- and social-media professors to follow; AdAge’s 25 media people to follow on Twitter; and Newsweek’s list of the 20 most influential South Asians in America.

I am confident that Sree’s experience in academic administration and his widely respected expertise in new media technology make him uniquely well-suited for this challenge.

You can connect with him on Twitter (@sree) or Facebook.com/sreetips or the old-fashioned way, via email.

Please join me in welcoming Sree in his new position.

Sincerely,

John H. Coatsworth
Provost

(Image courtesy of Deidre Schoo)

Zander Lurie — CBS’s SVP of strategic development, who worked on a number of its key digital initiatives — is leaving the media giant.

Lurie has been involved in everything from the company’s acquisition of Clicker to its recent spate of licensing deals for digital distribution of its premium content to the integration of its CNET tech news unit.

He does not have another job lined up, but is looking for an operational role, he said in an interview.

Lurie was CFO of CBS Interactive, before moving to his corporate role. Previously, he worked on M&A at CNET.

“CBS is now at a place where everything is really integrated and working between all the digital platforms and our sports, news and entertainment products,” said Lurie. “So, I want to get out and build something new and from the ground up.”

On the heels of our recent hiring of Mike Isaac to cover social tech for this site, Bonnie Cha will be joining the staff of All Things Digital as a senior reviewer.

She joins Walt Mossberg and Katie Boehret, as well as recent hire Lauren Goode, as part of our expanded All Things Reviewed site.

Cha has been covering technology since 2002, most recently spending eight years at CNET reviewing various consumer electronics, including printers, software and smartphones, as well as reporting on the wireless industry.

She also wrote for the Crave blog there, covering such topics as robotics and science, and served as a technical editor on several how-to books for McGraw-Hill.

When not tinkering with the latest gadgets, Cha enjoys spending her free time surfing or checking out live music. She is a graduate of Emory University with a degree in English and of the University of Southern California, where she got her masters in journalism.

Most of all, we think she’s a perfect fit for our ever-growing staff, so get ready for some insightful reviews and more when she starts in May.

Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson, who has developed a tough-talk reputation within Yahoo of late, went all sweet — well, less crabby, I guess — the day after the layoffs in which 2,000 employees were fired.

After dressing down top execs the night before the cuts by telling them the bad situation was due to their poor performance as leaders, his internal letter to the troops was also a bit cut-and-dried, with the not-very-sympathetic admonishment, “change is never easy.”

Not exactly what someone who just got their pink slip — or saw a close colleague get axed — likes to hear!

Today, Thompson opted to go with the softer side of Scott, in an internal memo I obtained titled “time to move forward.” It includes a promise to deliver a real strategic plan next week at an “All Hands” meeting. (I have previously reported that he was rolling out a new structure next week.)

Yahoo’s activist shareholder Third Point admonished Thompson yesterday for not having such a plan in place before making such widespread layoffs, which shed 14 percent of the workforce from the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

“While this action was unfortunately necessary and widely expected, Third Point, Yahoo!’s largest outside shareholder, is disappointed that this round of cuts occurred before CEO Scott Thompson has articulated his strategic plan for the Company,” it wrote in a letter (embedded below). “Shareholders deserve a management team and board who have a vision and strategic plan.”

Internally, there was also a lot of grumbling over the lack of a vision before the layoffs and worries that Thompson does not have a clear path for Yahoo.

“It’s like going into war and killing a big chunk of troops right before, without a plan in place about how to win,” said one person, in a common sentiment I heard from employees. “Everyone left feels shell-shocked and with no direction.”

In recent meetings about various options, including selling off a variety of Yahoo’s businesses, the former president of eBay’s PayPal payments unit has focused on a range of ideas, especially adding more commerce and data to the mix.

Apparently, all will be revealed next week, in what Thompson called “comprehensive plans for Yahoo!’s future.”

Thompson also did a little cheerleading:

“We can do this. We will do this! One thing I’ve heard repeatedly since I got here is that everyone wants to win again…I have seen big turnarounds before, and this company has the foundation, the spirit, the backbone, and the creativity to get it done,” he wrote. “Personally, I can’t wait to get moving.”

That’s good, because shareholders and employees have been waiting a long time for any forward momentum at Yahoo.

Here’s the memo below in its entirety:

From: Scott Thompson
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2012 1:15 PM
To:
Subject: time to move forward…

Yahoos –

This was a tough week. Thank you all for supporting each other through a difficult time.

As hard as big changes like this can be, I was encouraged to hear support from so many of you who really understand our need to operate differently. That said, I also know many of you still have a lot of questions about where we’re headed and how fast we can get there. I shared a few thoughts in my note earlier this week and you’ll hear more at our All Hands next week.

We deliberately separated this week’s employee action from next week’s discussion of our strategy. The reason was simple: we felt it was only fair and respectful to those who are leaving and transitioning to take care of each of them before turning to our future.

Starting next week we will begin looking forward and our All Hands is just the beginning. You’ll be hearing a lot more from me and other leaders about our comprehensive plans for Yahoo!’s future. The immediate next step for all of us is to get clear on our goals, and then take action and move.

There’s a lot to do and that’s why I can’t stress enough that we all need to focus on getting stuff done. Getting stuff done is short hand for eliminating bureaucracy and barriers so we can all innovate as fast as our customers and the industry require. That’s pretty fast.

Our users want fun, informative, engaging experiences on all screens that they feel were designed just for them. Advertisers want it to be much easier to work with us and they want measurable ROI on their spending. We can do all that. But we won’t win by talking about the opportunity. We’ll win by putting our customers first, creating high-quality experiences, and iterating on them quickly. Great user and advertiser experiences are what will ignite excitement around our brand and get us growing again.

You’ll receive the official invite to our All Hands shortly and we want to know what’s on your mind in advance. If you have questions before we meet next week, please check Backyard for information and answers to your questions. If you don’t see the answers, please post questions on Backyard, or you can email questions directly to the leadership team.

We can do this. We will do this! One thing I’ve heard repeatedly since I got here is that everyone wants to win again. There is so much passion for Yahoo! — for what it was and for what we all believe it can be. Even after all you’ve been through, there’s a hard core crew of Yahoos who believe in this company and in its ability to thrive. I have seen big turnarounds before, and this company has the foundation, the spirit, the backbone, and the creativity to get it done.

Personally, I can’t wait to get moving.

Scott

And here’s the Third Point letter from yesterday:

TP April 4 Statement

Finally, here is a video of a “Reporters’ Roundtable” I did last week on CNET:

I didn’t get the sense that Mike was anti-Apple. I think he loves Apple’s products and I told this to Steve Jobs. I think Mike was looking at Apple to become one of the positive forces for having influence on improving things.

– Steve Wozniak, in an interview with CNET’s Greg Sandoval about Mike Daisey

Who in their right mind would lie to Ira Glass?

That was my first reaction to the revelation that the theatrical monologuist Mike Daisey had lied or fabricated — or in his words, “taken dramatic license” with — certain parts of his stage play, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.”

When I met people at parties in recent weeks and told them that I write about technology and that I had devoted more than a decade to covering Apple, the first question I used to get was: “Did you know Steve Jobs?” Since about January of this year, that first question has become, “What do you think of Mike Daisey?”

I haven’t had a real answer. I hadn’t seen his show, which was favorably reviewed by the New York Times, nor had I heard the episode of the highly respected public radio documentary program “This American Life” titled “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory,” that had been adapted from his play.

The show — or shows — hit a cultural nerve at a critical moment. Apple is the biggest company in the world, sporting a market capitalization of $546 billion as of Friday, with $100 billion worth of cash and investments on its balance sheet and the most popular stable of consumer electronics products in the world, especially the iPhone and the iPad. All of them are manufactured by workers in China, who labor for wages that are low by Western standards, put in hours that by Western reckoning are long, under conditions that to Western eyes aren’t ideal, doing jobs that by any standard are incredibly tedious.

Daisey’s stage show, which became a sensation among New York’s chattering classes, sought to draw attention to the plight of allegedly oppressed workers at Foxconn, Apple’s manufacturing partner in China. As New York Times reviewer Charles Isherwood put it, the play “is a mind-clouding, eye-opening exploration of the moral choices we unknowingly or unthinkingly make when we purchase nifty little gadgets like the iPhone.”

The stage show had been adapted for radio on public radio’s “This American Life,” which is probably the most-respected radio documentary program in the history of broadcasting. And the Daisey episode was presented as documentary, meaning the radio show’s staff of journalists and producers were vouching for it being true.

The problem: Much of it wasn’t.

In the show, Daisey described a trip to China, as well as a visit to Foxconn’s outer gates and other manufacturing companies in Shenzen, where many are located. He delivers a detailed and emotionally riveting account of meeting girls as young as 12, 13 and 14 years old who claimed to work for Foxconn. This would be in violation both of local laws and of Apple policies.

He also told of meeting workers poisoned by a chemical called n-Hexane, used to polish screens.

And, perhaps most movingly, he related a tear-jerking scene in which he showed a working iPad to a man who said he had crippled a hand while making its parts in a Foxconn metal press, yet had never so much as seen one of the devices powered on. Seeing the iPad’s screen in action, he tells Daisey, “is like a kind of magic.”

The word “magic” fits oddly here, because these meetings didn’t happen as Daisey said. “This American Life” yesterday aired a lengthy episode entitled “Retraction,” documenting Daisey’s many liberties with the facts.

To help do so, a reporter for another public radio show — Rob Schmitz of “Marketplace” — did what no one else in the media seemed to be willing to do, which was subject Daisey’s claims to scrutiny. Most damning of all in Schmitz’s report was the testimony of Daisey’s translator, called Cathy. She was found — after Daisey had told TAL he had lost contact with her — and disputed many of the anecdotes taken from the play and used in the radio segment about Foxconn.

Among the fabrications: Daisey didn’t speak to quite as many people nor visit nearly as many plants as he said he did. She disputed finding underage workers. The n-Hexane poisoning incident occurred not at Foxconn in Shenzen where Daisey visited, but at a Wintek facility in Suzchou, more than 900 miles to the north of Shenzen.

The stage show, and therefore the radio show that was derived from it, turned out to be a mixture of facts and fiction. Which might be fine for a production on the New York theatrical stage, where fiction and fact blend readily. And, while it might be okay in entertainment products, you don’t expect it from a prestigious radio documentary program.

And that is where the problems began.

When Daisey’s monologue was adapted for “This American Life,” outrage began to grow among people who wanted to do something about it. It was, Glass says, the most downloaded episode of “TAL” ever, and public radio listeners did what public radio listeners tend to do. For one thing, they started a petition. More than a quarter of a million people have signed a petition at Change.org, inspired by the TAL production based on Daisey’s work, demanding that Apple make changes.

That includes crafting a “worker protection strategy” for new products released, as well as publishing data from Fair Labor Association audits.

Feeding the frenzy, Daisey stepped up as the leading voice for worker rights in China’s electronics industry. He was seemingly everywhere in the media. Since the TAL segment aired in January, Daisey has been seen on “CBS News Sunday Morning,” in a report that, like the “TAL” episode, is now going to have to be retracted or at the very least walked back.

Another CBS-owned property, CNET, hosted Daisey as part of “Reporters Roundtable,” alongside Charles Duhigg of the New York Times, co-author of a series of front page stories in that newspaper. Duhigg ended his “Roundtable” appearance by urging people who care about the issue to go and see Daisey’s play.

Daisey also appeared on MSNBC repeating the same anecdotes and tarnishing the usually shiny Apple. And on HBO. And PBS. And C-SPAN.

Needless to say, there will have to be many more retractions in the days ahead.

At this point, it’s hard to determine what’s more outrageous, Daisey’s lies to Ira Glass and his team, or the national media’s willingness to give Daisey a platform to repeat the same lies and fabrications without making the slightest effort to vet them.

The circumstances around Apple’s manufacturing arrangements in China aren’t new. As a columnist for Businessweek I wrote about Apple’s first round of “sweatshop” allegations in 2006, well before the age of the iPhone and the iPad, which had at the time first come to light in part because of the reporting by London’s Daily Mail.

I’ve never been to China. Many people know more about the on-the-ground facts concerning Apple’s factories than I do. But there are many reporters who have been there. In 2010, Bloomberg Businessweek’s Fredrik Balfour wrote a powerful cover story for that magazine, which aimed to get to the bottom of the string of suicides that occurred among Foxconn employees that year.

ABC’s “Nightline” visited Foxconn earlier this year. Its report was criticized in some circles, because at the time of his death, Apple’s late CEO Steve Jobs happened to be the largest shareholder of that network’s parent company, Disney. Also, ABC had been invited by Apple and Foxconn. Even so, “Nightline” anchor Bill Weir, seeing conditions very different from what Daisey described in the course of his reporting, wondered if Mike Daisey’s work was questionable.

At the very least, Daisey is a dramatist who now admits he chose to lie, but for reasons known only to himself. The chance to raise his profile and sell more tickets to his monologue are obvious potential motivations. Whatever it was, his dramatic product is meant to be consumed as thought-provoking entertainment, not as fact-based journalism, which many people assumed it was.

This is the crux of Daisey’s defense for lying to Ira Glass and his fact-checker: That he’s not a journalist and took dramatic license with the events, and now regrets doing the “This American Life” segment.

And that’s the real shame here.

Clearly, people care about how workers who make our electronics are treated, or there wouldn’t have been a market for Daisey’s show, or for an hour-long radio documentary adapting it. And the subject is one we need to discuss at length as a society. The net result of Mike Daisey’s efforts to put self-promotion ahead of the facts has badly muddied the waters, and has probably done more harm to the people he sought to help.

So, instead of illumination on a serious topic, we are left with little. Mike Daisey is an opportunistic fabulist and should be ashamed of himself for lying. Ira Glass and his team are ashamed for giving him wider attention, and have said so. But there are many more people who should be even more ashamed for taking Daisey’s lies at face value. There should be many more retractions and apologies in the days ahead.

But now we have to start the conversation about Apple and Foxconn and workers’ rights all over again, this time with real, verifiable facts at our command. Is that so much to ask?

(Image courtesy of Mike Daisey’s Web site.)

In a deal that was just signed, longtime Silicon Valley exec Shelby Bonnie has sold his social publishing start-up, Whiskey Media, to Santa Monica-based entertainment and interactive production company BermanBraun.

As part of the deal, BermanBraun will get three key sites of San Francisco-based Whiskey, including video entertainment-focused Screened, tech-testing site Tested, and Anime Vice, which covers anime and manga comics. It will also acquire Whiskey’s content-publishing platform.

Two other sites owned by Whiskey — games-oriented Giant Bomb and comic-book database Comic Vine — will be sold to another media company, which is rumored to be CBS Interactive.

Heaped on top of the niche content, aimed at passionate fans, Whiskey mixes in a lot of social networking, as well as user-generated content, along with its professional fare.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

But the major reason for the acquisition is that BermanBraun — which also makes popular sites for large portals such as Microsoft’s MSN (the Wonderwall celebrity site and Glo, aimed at the women’s lifestyle arena) and AOL (upcoming sites on weather, men and pets) — needs to be able to scale its online content production. The Whiskey platform should be able to allow it to more easily grow and create new sites more quickly, as well as mine data across them.

“With the addition of Whiskey’s first rate team and powerful, state of the art publishing, data and social tools platform, we will be able to further enhance our user experience and engagement, and provide our advertising partners with unparalleled data insights,” said Lloyd Braun and Gail Berman, who run BermanBraun, in a statement. “One of the other great parts of this acquisition is that we will have Shelby Bonnie in our lives. We have enormous respect for Shelby personally and professionally, and his insights, relationships and acumen will be invaluable to us.”

Bonnie, who was once CEO of CNET, which he helped found, added: “I have had the pleasure of knowing both Lloyd and Gail for years and they are two incredibly high integrity people who bring passion and creativity to the interactive space. As we see a dramatic changes in the whole media landscape, success will demand new skills and talents. BermanBraun’s content skills and vision joined with the Whiskey platform will create a combination that I believe is without equal. I couldn’t be more excited for the combination.”

Here is a video interview I did with Bonnie in mid-2010 about Whiskey:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120315/exclusive-bermanbraun-buys-most-of-shelby-bonnies-whiskey-media/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120313/turntable-fm-gets-its-label-deals-done/ http://allthingsd.com/20120313/turntable-fm-gets-its-label-deals-done/#comments Tue, 13 Mar 2012 18:02:41 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=185533 Turntable.fm, the digital music start-up that got a whole lot of buzz last summer, now has deals with all four of the big music labels.

The company was slated to announce the pacts — with Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, EMI Music Group and Sony — at the South by Southwest conference today. CNET reported on Turntable’s Warner deal last week, and I think that report helped accelerate today’s announcement.

The fact that Turntable was able to get deals done in less than a year — the company is the result of a well-documented pivot from something called Stickybits — says a lot about the newfound flexibility on the part of the music business. Especially since Turntable has carved out a new business model — basically a hybrid between “on-demand” services like Spotify and “radio” services like Pandora.

The flip side is that the buzz and momentum Turntable was generating last summer has gone away. That may be due mostly to Spotify’s U.S. launch, which by all accounts has been a huge success. But it may also be because not that many people want to listen to other people play music.

I do, though, so I hope the deals give Turntable the ability to turn things around. Right now, when I visit the service I don’t see any of my pals there. And while I’m sure I could find some cool people playing cool songs there if I dug around for a while, I don’t want to do a lot of digging.

One thing the deals won’t do is give Turntable the ability to open its doors to users outside the U.S. But it does give the company a better chance of getting international deals done.

That would give Turntable a leg up on rival Pandora. But there are a gazillion legal ways to get your hands on digital music, for very little money these days — from Spotify to Rhapsody to iTunes Match to Deezer. Getting heard above that din will be a challenge.

 

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120313/turntable-fm-gets-its-label-deals-done/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120218/antennagate-ends-with-a-15-settlement/ http://allthingsd.com/20120218/antennagate-ends-with-a-15-settlement/#comments Sat, 18 Feb 2012 18:40:15 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=176110 Crazy to recall this now, but back in the the summer of 2010, the Apple world was briefly obsessed with the design of the iPhone’s antenna, and whether it did or didn’t contribute to the phone’s call-quality problems.

The furor eventually prompted Steve Jobs to hold an unprecedented press conference to defend the phone’s design. The issue eventually went away, but not completely, due to the inevitable class action suits.

But now those are gone, too. A settlement will give iPhone 4 buyers who never exchanged their phones for a new one — and didn’t take up Apple’s offer for a free “bumper” back in 2010 — a chance to get a new bumper, or take a $15 payout.

CNET has more details, and Apple PR rep Natalie Harrison offered this comment over the phone: “This settlement relates to a small number of customers who indicated that they experienced antenna or reception issues with their iPhone 4 and didn’t want to take advantage of a free case from Apple while it was being offered in 2010.”

From what I can tell the settlement applies to anyone who’s ever bought an iPhone 4, including people who are buying them at this very moment — there doesn’t appear to be any kind of end date.

If you’re looking for ways to spend that $15, by the way, Apple just happens to have iTunes gift cards, in two very nice designs, in that exact denomination.

 

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