“They have given us a solution to the Messenger service,” India’s home affairs minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, said today. “We will insist that they give us the solution for the enterprise service too.”

And RIM will likely insist it can’t. Unless the situation has suddenly changed from last week, when VP Robert Crow reiterated the company’s claim that it cannot decipher the encrypted corporate emails sent over its network. “We can’t give a solution for enterprise services,” he said. “It’s not possible to do so, because the keys of that service are with the corporate enterprises and corporate entity that owns the server.”

So what, then? That’s not yet clear, but we may know more shortly. Said Chidambaram, “I think a decision [about the future of RIM in India] will be taken today by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Telecom Ministry.”

How do you say “deadline extension” in Hindi?

And we’ve just added an exciting new speaker to the already top-drawer list: Daniel Ek, co-founder and CEO of Spotify.

For those living under a rock, Ek (pictured here with co-founder Martin Lorentzon) leads one of the most exciting music services on the Web right now.

In fact, the Swedish entrepreneur is shaking up how and where people listen to and consume music.

As MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka–who will be interviewing Ek onstage–recently wrote of Spotify’s efforts to bring its hugely popular (and legal) streaming offering to the U.S. market:

In Europe, where Spotify has been a very big success, listeners can stream an unlimited amount of music, on demand, without ever paying a cent. But in the U.S., rival streaming services like Rhapsody, MOG and Napster generally only offer a very brief trial period of a few days before requiring that a pay wall go up.

For the past two years, Spotify has insisted that free, unlimited streaming is the only way the service will work, because that’s Spotify’s most effective marketing technique. Subscribers who do pay up get benefits like ad-free music, and the ability to port their songs to mobile devices like iPhones.

But the labels, most notably Warner Music Group, have insisted that unlimited free streams only serve to strip away their product’s remaining value–if you can listen for free on Spotify, why would you ever buy another CD or iTunes single?

The whole mobile music space is a riveting one to dive into, of course, and we think Ek is the perfect person to help us do so.

Ek will appear Tuesday morning, December 6, but D: Dive Into Mobile opens on Monday, December 6, with an evening onstage interview with Google Android majordomo Andy Rubin.

The new conference represents the very first brand extension of our D: All Things Digital conference, now in its ninth year of grilling the big names in tech and media to sold-out analog audiences and scores more on the Web.

And, as always, there will be no PowerPoints, no panels and definitely no pontificating.

What there will be are unrehearsed, unscripted and unexpected interviews with top players, taking a big-picture view of the broader digital landscape.

But, unlike big D, D: Dive Into Mobile is topic-focused, drilling down deeply into the ubiquity of mobile technology and devices, and its implications for brands, organizations and consumers worldwide.

Offering a more intimate and focused conference setting, D: Dive Into Mobile will feature other industry heavyweights, including: Dan Hesse, President and CEO of Sprint Nextel; Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of Research in Motion; Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard; Joe Belfiore, Vice President of Windows Phone Program Management at Microsoft; Jon Rubinstein of Palm, now owned by Hewlett-Packard; Foursquare CEO and co-founder Dennis Crowley; Google Ad Products Management head Susan Wojcicki; and AT&T Emerging Devices President Glenn Lurie.

D: Dive Into Mobile will be held at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco and, as usual, we’ll be liveblogging the whole thing and also posting highlight videos.

Along with Walt Mossberg, Kafka and I, Mossberg Solution’s Katherine Boehret will be conducting the interviews.

You can sign up here for D: Dive Into Mobile.

Hola Sofia Vergara!

In an interesting brand extension, the popular celebrity and entertainment site Wonderwall has launched a version aimed at the U.S. Hispanic market called Wonderwall Latino.

The main Wonderwall site, which is a partnership between Hollywood production company BermanBraun and Microsoft’s MSN portal that launched in early 2009, now has 11.3 million unique users and 337 million page views a month.

That site is getting a design overhaul, with new features including voting buttons, a dedicated video page and a buzz stream with breaking news and tweets, as well as apps for the Apple iPhone and IPod Touch.

According to an MSN blog on the Wonderwall extension, “BermanBraun will spearhead the design, programming, and operations of the digital brand. MSN will provide unique content and lead the advertising efforts in partnership with Microsoft and BermanBraun.”

BermanBraun also recently debuted a political site called BLTWY with MSNBC.com.

After what started out as one of Web 2.0′s most frothy deals and soon became a contentious relationship, several sources said that Google and MySpace are moving close to signing a new agreement, in which the search giant would remain the provider of search and online advertising technology for the social networking site.

But, said sources, this deal is a lot different from the one signed four years back when the News Corp. (NWS) unit was flying high and Google (GOOG) forked over $900 million in guaranteed payments to stave off a competitive effort from Microsoft (MSFT).

This time, because MySpace’s traffic has declined so precipitously over these years, the new deal has no giant guaranteed payments and not even any of the bells and whistles the recent renewed and expanded search deal AOL (AOL) struck with Google has.

“It is a different time and MySpace is in a much different place,” said one source close to the situation. “This is a realistic deal.”

Sources stressed the deal with Google was not complete, although it could be struck within weeks.

Sources said Microsoft (MSFT), which had been in talks with MySpace too, has largely dropped out, although it certainly could put forward another offer at any time.

But, said sources, the search volume from MySpace is not as valuable to Microsoft’s Bing search service and it would have to pay MySpace more since it does not monetize as well as Google.

Another bidder, Yahoo (YHOO), sources said, was not considered a factor in the competition, although it could also still make a better bid.

Google and MySpace continued their talks about renewing the deal after their original contract ended at the end of July, agreeing to two one-month extensions.

The hope is, if struck, a new Google deal will perform better, given MySpace will launch a soup-to-nuts renovation of its site, codenamed Futura, in mid-October.

Before that, the Beverly Hills, Calif., company, which has undergone much management turmoil over the last year, has been dribbling out some of these new features.

That has included new profiles and also the ability to synch status updates on its site with Facebook.

Yes, the very social networking giant whose total decimation of MySpace in the consumer space has been at the heart of its problems in making its original Google deal as lucrative as was once hoped.

MySpace declined to comment on the status of its negotiations, and Google has not yet returned a query about the deal discussions.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

In a nutshell, ExtensionFM allows Chrome users to temporarily store, and play, most music they come across as they tour the Web. There’s an explanatory video at the bottom of this post, but the easiest thing to do is simply fire up Chrome, add the service to your browser and go surfing. You’ll be particularly happy if you visit MP3 blogs and Tumblrs.

The problem for Dan Kantor’s New York-based start-up is that, for the time being, it’s got a limited number of potential users. Chrome has less then 10 percent of the browser market, and only a subset of those users are comfortable with the idea of adding “extensions” in the first place.

Perhaps that’s why ExtensionFM has just 25,000 users after launching earlier this year–even after Google (GOOG) gave it a boost by featuring it at its I/O developer conference. But Kantor, who has put in time at various start-ups–most notably Delicious–as well as at Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT) and AOL (AOL), says he plans to expand to other browsers–Apple’s (AAPL) Safari browser just got a lot more extension friendly–and eventually the service will move onto mobile platforms, etc.

That’s the bet, at least. Kantor has raised a seed round from high-profile investors like Spark Capital and Betaworks, so they’re expecting this thing to move on from ultra-niche status eventually.

Or Google could just buy the thing outright and plug it into whatever it does launch, whenever that happens.

In the meantime, here’s a recent sit-down I had with Kantor:

And ExtensionFM’s own description of its service:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100827/meet-extensionfm-the-music-startup-google-should-buy/feed/ 7 http://allthingsd.com/20091109/google-blows-book-search-deal-deadline/ http://allthingsd.com/20091109/google-blows-book-search-deal-deadline/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:36:07 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=28552 Google’s five-year-old copyright feud with the publishing industry will drag on a few days more now that the deadline for submitting a revised settlement proposal has been pushed back once again. Google (GOOG) and attorneys representing the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers were supposed to file the document today, but instead asked the judge overseeing the matter to give them until the end of the week.

“The parties have been in discussions with the Department of Justice both prior to and since the October 7 status conference,” attorney Michael Boni explained in a letter requesting the extension. “We met with the Department as recently as this past Friday, November 6. In light of the above, the parties respectfully request this additional time to file the motion.”

It would seem, then, that the latest version of the settlement did not adequately address the DOJ’s concerns that the agreement could violate antitrust law by giving Google “de facto exclusive rights for the digital distribution of orphan works.” Presumably if it had, it would have been filed on time.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091109/google-blows-book-search-deal-deadline/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090707/new-york-times-to-boston-globe-bidders-take-your-time/ http://allthingsd.com/20090707/new-york-times-to-boston-globe-bidders-take-your-time/#comments Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:46:15 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=9002 Stressed about making tomorrow morning’s deadline to submit a bid for the Boston Globe? No worries! The New York Times (NYT), which is selling the paper it bought in 1993, is telling prospective buyers to take their time.

Goldman Sachs (GS), which is running the auction for the Times, had originally told bidders to submit their offers by July 8. But as of last night, that deadline has been pushed back, with no new deadline to replace it, reports…the Boston Globe.

The Globe doesn’t know what the extension means, but it does have a concise roundup of potential bidders:

Three local businessmen have surfaced as potential Globe bidders: Stephen Pagliuca, co-owner of the Boston Celtics and managing director at the Bain Capital private equity firm; Jack Connors, a former advertising executive and chairman of Partners HealthCare; and Stephen Taylor, a former Globe executive and member of the family that sold the newspaper to the Times Co. for $1.1 billion in 1993. Connors and Pagliuca, who initially were considering separate bids, requested and were given permission by Goldman Sachs to join forces and submit a common bid.

The other big question. How much will the winner end up paying for the paper? A lot less than what the Times paid for it 16 years ago, obviously.

The Times has already told bidders that they should expect to assume $59 million in pension liabilities if they walk away with the paper, but beyond that, it’s anyone guess. The paper’s own David Carr went through this exercise last month and elicited guesstimates that ranged from $1 to $250 million.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090707/new-york-times-to-boston-globe-bidders-take-your-time/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080819/mobilemea-culpa-redux/ http://allthingsd.com/20080819/mobilemea-culpa-redux/#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:00:36 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=3480 If, as Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently said, the launch of MobileMe was not Apple’s finest hour, then what can be said of the more than 800 hours that followed? Because they haven’t exactly been Apple’s finest hours either.

So, how about “here’s another free extension to your MobileMe subscription–now let’s forget this ever happened”?

In yet another attempt to make amends with dismayed MobileMe subscribers, Apple (AAPL) is granting them a free 60-day service extension. And that’s on top of the free 30-day extension it offered in July.

In an e-mail to MobileMe subscribers announcing the extension, a humbled Apple acknowledged that the Web services suite still doesn’t live up to Apple standards. “We have already made many improvements to MobileMe, but we still have many more to make,” the email reads. “… We are working very hard to make MobileMe a great service we can all be proud of. We know that MobileMe’s launch has not been our finest hour, and we truly appreciate your patience as we turn this around.”

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