The company behind “Sesame Street” has signed an expanded deal with digital-book publisher Callaway Digital Arts to create three more iPad apps.

The first title from the new partnership, “The Great Cookie Thief,” is due out this summer. Callaway had already partnered with Sesame Workshop on two iPad bestsellers: “The Monster At the End of this Book” and “Another Monster At the End of This Book.”

The companies aren’t saying what the two other new titles will be, but CEO Rex Ishibashi said they might not just be digital versions of existing “Sesame” books.

In the meantime, the companies are at work on updating “Another Monster At the End of the Book” to take advantage of the high-resolution screen on the new iPad.

Ishibashi said his company, which remains exclusively focused on the iPhone and iPad, is excited by the high-resolution screen, voice input and improved camera on the updated iPad, and expects to take advantage of those features in the new apps.

“All the other companies are two to three tries away from hitting the iPad 1, and here is Apple with iPad 3,” Ishibashi said.

The new “Sesame” titles should help make up for the fact that Grover was at the Consumer Electronics Show and I missed it.

As for Callaway, the company is working on more homegrown titles in addition to those licensed from Sesame Workshop, Mattel and others.

Ishibashi declined to release any download numbers or financials for the company, but said its workforce has expanded to nearly 50 employees, up from 30 when he joined in October 2011. He said the company expects to double its headcount this year.

Which is why I can’t believe I am missing lovable, furry Grover. The blue Muppet is making an in-the-fur appearance at CES on Tuesday, in a speech by Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs, and I am already booked.

The chipmaker has worked with Sesame Workshop on an augmented reality application.

Jacobs is also set to show off other tech stuff, including a demo of Windows 8 running on its hardware and working over AT&T’s LTE network and Lenovo’s Android-based television, which is powered by a Qualcomm chip.

But what has me sore is missing the Muppets. If you are still in Vegas, Grover, call me!

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Knell, who starts Dec. 1, fills a post formerly held by Vivian Schiller, who resigned in March.

Not much to explain here–it’s Grover on “Sesame Street,” channeling the guy from the Old Spice television commercial.

Somehow, it works.

Okay, it’s admittedly a very funny mock skit from this weekend’s season premiere of “Saturday Night Live,” featuring singer Katy Perry and her problems related to a canceled appearance on “Sesame Street.”

But must poor Elmo suffer? You’ll figure out why right away.

One big plus: The genius of former SNL cast members Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler, who was also host of the NBC television comedy show. Perry was the musical guest too.

Here’s the video:

What prompted the change? Here’s the site’s explanation, via product manager Joshua Siegel:

Well, we’ve spent significant resources on creating and improving our state-of-the-art Content ID system and many other powerful tools for copyright owners. Now, all of the major U.S. movie studios, music labels and over 1,000 other global partners use Content ID to manage their content on YouTube. Because of the success of these ongoing technological efforts, we are able to increase the upload limit today.

I’m not sure I understand that. And perhaps someone from YouTube will take another crack at it down the line. But here’s my best guess at translating: We used to cap videos at 10 minutes in part because it made it harder for people to upload entire movies or TV shows to the site, and that made copyright owners less mad at us. Now they like us a lot more, so we’re bumping up the limit by 50 percent.

Bumping up that limit also increases bandwidth and storage costs; theoretically the longer clips will also give the site more chances to sell more ads. Wonder how this impacts Google sales chief Nikesh Arora’s recent pronouncement that YouTube “is on the verge of imminent profitability.”

Meanwhile, I don’t think I watch many clips on YouTube that approach the 10-minute limit, anyway. But I do like this long clip (so much that I think I’ve embedded it twice before): Six minutes and 27 seconds of Stevie Wonder jamming on “Sesame Street”:

The move gives Sesame Workshop an opportunity to tap its library of nearly 5,000 titles as electronic books prove to be one of publishing’s fastest-growing segments.

The nonprofit organization, best known for its flagship preschool television series “Sesame Street,” is expected to initially post five free e-books at sesamestreet.org/ebooks, where the works can be read digitally but not downloaded.

The titles include Jon Stone’s “The Monster at the End of This Book,” first published in 1971 and the best-selling Sesame Street title to date. It will be offered in a digital edition along with optional audio-narration and word-highlighting features.

The four others, including “Elmo’s ABC Book,” are available only in the standard e-book format. Each week a new free e-book will be featured as a replacement for one of the five existing titles.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

A Los Angeles federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction against BlueBeat, a California-based site that had briefly sold the band’s music, arguing it used “psycho-acoustic simulation”–basically, making a note-for-note recording of the band’s recordings–to make the songs its own.

The same judge had already issued a temporary restraining order on behalf of music label EMI Music Group against the site earlier in the month and had scheduled a hearing for Friday, Nov. 20. But this ruling cancels out the hearing and by any reasonable standard should end the case.

Then again, this whole story has been a head-scratcher from the start, so who knows? Maybe the BlueBeat guys will try an even more preposterous argument down the road.

Part of me thinks that the whole thing may be some sort of Negativeland/U2 hack/stunt/performance art piece. Or maybe there were a lot of mood-altering substances involved. Or maybe it’s part of a conspiracy to create work for copyright lawyers.

Whatever. I’ve embedded the court ruling below, if you insist on reading it. But here’s a clip of Richard Pryor reading the alphabet on “Sesame Street,” which is just as edifying and much more entertaining.

bluebeat beatles suit –

Confused? Don’t be. It’s a straightforward explanation: Web video watchers have even twitchier fingers than couch potatoes flipping through 500 channels. Which means that the longer any particular video runs, the less likely they are to watch the whole thing.

Common sense, really. But the folks at video-tracking service TubeMogul are now offering a statistical backstop: A study of how long the average Web video watcher stays with any given clip (click chart below to enlarge).

Answer: Less than one minute. Ten seconds into an average clip, more than 10 percent of viewers have moved on, TubeMogul says. And by 60 seconds, more than half of viewers have bailed out. Anything more than five minutes is heroic: More than 91 percent of viewers are gone by then.

That’s one of the reasons many Web video publishers and advertisers are sticking with “pre-roll” ads that run before any actual content shows up–even Google’s (GOOG) YouTube, which had previously disdained pre-rolls, is now contemplating using them in order to goose revenue. (And yes, this site uses them as well).

That’s a shame. In an ideal world, video sites would give people a good reason to keep watching a clip as soon as they hit play. And they would find a way to get an ad in front of viewers once they’re already engrossed.

Easier said than done, admittedly. But while Web video’s big brains go to work on this problem, let me invite you to stick all the way through the six-minute, 48-second clip below: Stevie Wonder singing “Superstition” on Sesame Street in 1973. If you get all the way through and aren’t satisfied, let me know. I’ll get you your money back.