In a wide-ranging town hall meeting with employees that lasted about an hour on Wednesday, the 31-year-old CEO at times swigged from a beer bottle while he set corporate priorities for the next six months, including beefing up financial controls and hiring more finance staff. Mr. Mason also discussed how the Chicago company doesn’t “have any margin for error.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Last fall, Microsoft aggressively recruited Mr. Weingarten to convince him to build his nutrition app Fooducate for its Windows Phone. Microsoft proposed putting a Fooducate engineer in Tel Aviv through a weeklong boot camp, and offered a new Windows-based Nokia phone for software testing.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

At that price, the business-software company has a market value of roughly $688 million.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Investors are not taking it as a good sign that Netflix needs a $200 million infusion of cash, and issuing fresh stock in the process. Netflix’s share price, which fell Monday during an ugly trading session, slipped about 8 percent in after-hours trading but clawed back some of those losses.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

In a regulatory filing, Motorola Mobility said: “On September 28, 2011, Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. and Google Inc. each received a Request for Additional Information and Documentary Material from the Antitrust Division of U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) regarding the proposed merger between the companies. The companies intend to cooperate fully and respond expeditiously to the DOJ. The transaction is currently expected to close by the end of 2011 or in early 2012.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Zynga also disclosed it conducted a “third-party” valuation in August that assumed a $14.05 billion value for Zynga’s stock — up slightly from the $13.98 billion valuation three months earlier. The analysis also baked in 75 percent odds of an IPO — slightly lower than the 80 percent probability of an IPO three months earlier before a stretch of wild market swings that dented the IPO market.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

As I noted yesterday, there are lots of reasons for Qualcomm to want Atheros, not the least of which is its extensive customer list.

Qualcomm’s specialty has always been in CDMA technology, the flavor of mobile phone technology favored by Verizon Wireless and Sprint, and it collects considerable royalties around its patent portfolio there. It has struggled to penetrate other markets, and last year shuttered its FloTV operation amid minimal demand. The good news was that it sold its FloTV spectrum to AT&T for $1.93 billion, which is no doubt offsetting the cost of this deal. Add that to the $10.3 billion in cash and short-term investments on its balance sheet as of Sept. 26 and this is an easy deal to do.

It’s also the biggest deal in Qualcomm’s history and the first significant one under CEO Paul Jacobs, who is the son of founder Irwin Jacobs.

Atheros shareholders have plenty of reasons to smile today as well. The company’s stock price surged by 19 percent yesterday. At $45 a share, Qualcomm is paying more than Atheros has ever been worth in its entire history as a publicly held company. As Shira Ovide over at Deal Journal notes, its highest price before yesterday was $43.90. Happy New Year, indeed.

I caught up with Qualcomm Executive Vice President Steve Mollenkopf and Atheros CEO Craig Barratt to talk about the deal.

NewEnterprise: Steve, let’s start with you. What got Qualcomm interested in Atheros?

Mollenkopf: Historically Qualcomm has been focused on the cellular phone, though recently we’ve done much more than that. We had some integration relationships with some companies that allow us to deliver a platform to our customers. They’re essentially technical relationships, and one of those companies was Atheros. So we were familiar with them. But the real reason, the why Atheros and why now question comes down to this. We think the industry is moving to a place where a lot of the technology and use cases that are being created as part of the shift to smartphones will be used outside of just phones, and will move into many adjacent spaces. The requirement of technology and different customers overlap a lot with Atheros. They’re a leader in their space, we’re a leader in ours and we want to go into markets that will require the expertise from both of us. It seemed natural, actually.

Craig, the idea for the acquisition seems to have grown out of an existing partnership. When did the talk turn from being Qualcomm’s partner to becoming part of Qualcomm?

Barratt: The partnership has gone on for about five years, where we’ve cooperated on joint reference and designs and software and feature integration. Over the years we’ve broadened out from Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, powerline and optical networking. We do have a much more horizontal business. Qualcomm has a very strong vertical business. Through our partnership we saw the teams had a good cultural fit, the engineering teams really respect each other. When we looked at our own strategic imperatives over the long term, we saw that cellular technologies are going to be applied in a much broader markets over time, beyond just smartphones and tablets. There’s an intersection between the Qualcomm technology and our technology, and that’s only going to increase. You’ve probably heard that set-top boxes and things like that are going to start to run Android. So a lot of these mobile technologies are going to start showing up in things like the connected home. Strategically it all started to make sense.

And what will your new job be at Qualcomm?

Barratt: After the acquisition closes, which should be in the first half of 2011, my role will be president of Qualcomm Networking and Connectivity, reporting to Steve.

Steve, if I’m not mistaken, this is the biggest deal that Qualcomm has ever done.

Mollenkopf: You’re correct. For us on the Qualcomm side this is a big step toward expanding our business beyond our traditional platform business and we’re doing it in a way that is in line with how the industry is changing. A lot of the things we’ve been doing with Atheros are things we’ve already been doing as part of our relationship, so this is a natural next step.

Secrets about tech companies are a major feature of the insider trading charges unveiled so far. Companies including AMD, Dell, Research in Motion, Marvell, Western Digital, Taiwan Semiconductor, Sierra Wireless and Broadcom allegedly had secrets leaked about them — including revenue and sales forecasts.

The alleged secrets passed about Apple products and product sales came courtesy of a business development official at Flextronics, Walter Shimoon, according to the government’s legal complaint released today. The government said Flextronics had business dealings with Apple, including supplying parts such as the camera and charger components for the iPhone and iPod.

Shimoon, according to the insider-trading charges, gave an unnamed government witness a secretive chat about a brand new Apple device in the works. The conversation took place in Oct 2009, nearly four months before the introduction of the iPad.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Apple (AAPL) could announce a print-subscription offering as early as the next month or two, some of the people familiar with the matter said. One of these people cautioned that Apple is still working on the technology and may prefer to announce its periodical service early next year, along with the likely introduction of a new iPad.

The subscription push appears to be a sign that newspapers and magazines will be Apple’s next front in its sale of media like music, television shows, movies and books.

A hub for buying newspapers and magazines–similar to Apple’s iBooks storefront–also could help the iPad stand out from a coming wave of rival tablet computers backed by Google Inc.’s (GOOG) software.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

In April, Gizmodo published details and video of the new iPhone 4 model. The website said it paid to obtain the phone, which was allegedly left behind in a bar by an Apple employee. The San Mateo County, Calif., district attorney’s office opened an investigation into whether crimes were committed in how the iPhone 4 details got out.

Gizmodo and its parent company, Gawker Media LLC, had been resisting efforts by the district attorney’s office to search computers and other equipment seized from the home of Jason Chen, the Gizmodo editor who wrote about the iPhone prototype. Gawker had said that it was inappropriate for law-enforcement officials to seize materials from a news organization just with a search warrant, which news organizations can’t challenge in court.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Already flooded with 3-D movies, 3-D televised sporting events and 3-D scantily clad women, the world now will have a 3-D newspaper section.

The Philadelphia Inquirer said today it will publish part of its newspaper in 3-D next month, showing off photos and 3-D ads, including one from Best Buy (BBY). The technology also will be available on Philly.com, the local Web portal owned by the Inquirer’s parent company.

“Most people associate 3-D with electronic media but the 3-D experience in newspaper revolutionizes the reader’s experience and engages them in yet another way,” Philadelphia Inquirer Publisher Brian Tierney said in a statement.

Fueled by the success of the 3-D movie “Avatar,” companies have been scrambling for their own piece of the 3-D boomlet. Even though almost no one in the country owns a 3-D television set, ESPN is among several TV companies launching 3-D TV networks.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Tablet editions of Time and Popular Science magazines–each priced at $4.99–were among the most popular paid downloads for the iPad over the weekend. The thousands of iPad applications available so far also include editions from GQ, Outside magazine, USA Today, the New York Times (NYT) and The Wall Street Journal.

The majority of magazines and newspapers for the iPad are downloaded through iTunes, the channel to purchase music, movies, books and other entertainment for the iPhone and iPad. The more than 125 million iTunes account holders can order iPad periodicals with just a few taps on a screen, instead of pulling out their credit cards and signing into multiple Web accounts.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

At Condé Nast Publications, Wired magazine is offering different levels of ad functionality depending on how many pages of ads a marketer buys, according to a person familiar with the matter. Advertisers that agree to buy eight pages of ads in a single issue of Wired magazine will be able to lace video and other extra features through the iPad version, say people familiar with the matter.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Read the rest of this post on the original site

A group of pay-TV operators, including Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC), Dish Network (DISH) and Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), filed a petition Tuesday asking the Federal Communications Commission to change its rules to require arbitration and prevent broadcasters from pulling their signals during fee negotiations. The issue also could come up at a Capitol Hill hearing Thursday.

Several TV providers also sent a letter to influential members of Congress Tuesday, asking them to “carefully examine the circumstances that have resulted in the current imbalance in retransmission consent negotiations.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The legal dispute started four years ago, when marketing firm Valassis Communications Inc. alleged that News Corp.’s News America Marketing, which sells coupon inserts in Sunday newspapers and in grocery-store displays, unfairly used its power with customers to gain advantages over competitors. News Corp. contested the claims.

A jury in a Michigan court last year awarded $300 million to Valassis in related litigation, and a similar case has been pending in California.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Time Warner Cable’s contract to carry News Corp.’s Fox network, as well as cable channels including FX, expires at the end of the month. Contract talks have hinged on a relatively new issue in the media business: cash fees for the rights to carry broadcast TV.

News Corp. has been a prominent advocate of cash fees for its Fox network, while Time Warner Cable has said media companies are making unfairly high price demands that will lead to higher cable bills for consumers.

News Corp. also owns The Wall Street Journal.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The investment, whose size the Time Warner Inc. Web site declined to disclose, comes as news organizations seek more local information about high school sports, eateries and social events, in which they see an untapped market. Outside.In and a growing cadre of start-ups either hire people to write neighborhood news, or collect and organize dispatches from local citizens, news outlets or bloggers.

MSNBC.com, a joint venture of NBC Universal and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), this summer acquired EveryBlock, which feeds crime reports, restaurant health inspections and other data to news organizations’ Web sites. AOL Inc. recently acquired the local-news network Patch.

CNN.com, which is part of Time Warner’s (TWX) Turner Broadcasting, plans to carry the Outside.In dispatches on its own Web site—the biggest push into local news so far by one of the most popular national news outlets in the country.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Skiff would give publishers an alternative to Amazon.com Inc.’s (AMZN) Kindle store, which currently dominates the burgeoning field of digital reading. Through Skiff, Hearst said consumers will be able to buy digital publications that have better graphics and look more like their print counterparts, including the inclusion of advertising, than versions offered elsewhere.

The service will include a digital storefront as well as a back-end system that publishers can use to render their publications for a range of electronic devices, including Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iPhone and small laptops called netbooks. Skiff, which Hearst has been developing for more than two years as a separate company called First Paper LLC, also is developing its own e-reading device with a consumer-electronics firm.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Fwix, a one-year-old start-up backed by BlueRun Ventures, is one of a growing number of portals for “hyperlocal” news, a buzzword that refers to sites about schools, culture, gossip and other information on a neighborhood level. Other hyperlocal aggregators include Outside.In and EveryBlock. Some, like Patch, have their own staff, while others, like Fwix, mostly organize news written by bloggers and community members.

Now Fwix is launching a new advertising product, AdWire, and agreeing to split revenue with the people who write the local information, laying down the gauntlet against big news aggregators from Google on down.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Hearst Corp.’s Esquire magazine will pepper its December issue with markers that trigger interactive video segments featuring cover subject Robert Downey Jr. and other actors, as well as an ad for Lexus. In doing so, Esquire is taking advantage of an emerging technology called augmented reality, which mixes real-life images with graphics or other effects. TV networks use AR to make the yellow first-down lines on football fields.

The cover and several pages of the Esquire issue include square stickers with black-and-white designs. People can hold the magazine up to a Web camera to trigger the video segments, which are similar to some video-conferencing technologies in their lifelike quality.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Representing new media, in a discussion over the future of journalism, are Federated Media’s John Battelle; Marissa Mayer, who leads Google’s (GOOG) search services and consumer products like Chrome; and Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau. Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the New York Times (NYT), and The Wall Street Journal’s top editor, Robert Thomson, stand in for the old guard.

Aggregator sites like Huffington Post and online portals like Yahoo (YHOO) and Google have seen their readership, advertising revenue and influence increase. Meanwhile, traditional-media types have criticized these forces for unfairly leeching their reporting and hurting their business models. We’ll be alert for verbal sparring.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

(For the youth-challenged, “LMK” is the texting shorthand for “let me know.”)

LMK joins a crowded field of aggregation sites, which cull news and information from across the Web and organize them by topic or in other user-friendly ways. Other aggregators include Topix, Newser and Daylife, and sites like the Daily Beast that combine aggregation with their own content.

LMK will be nearly entirely automated, with just one full-time employee. Initially, the most developed part of the site is about college football, with news, blog posts, photos and statistics. It will roll out new topics every few weeks.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Google is being unfairly blamed for the declining newspaper-industry revenue resulting from shifting reader habits, Schmidt told Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan in an interview posted over the weekend.

“Because we play such a central role in information, we’ve become somewhat used to being blamed for everything,” Schmidt said. “Imagine if Google didn’t exist. Would the same criticism still exist? You betcha.”

Read the rest of this post on the original

“Some readers, users and journalists have asked us if the AP’s plan is about Google since we host complete AP articles,” writes Alexander Macgillivray. “The answer is that it doesn’t appear to pertain to Google since we host those articles in partnership with the AP.”

Read the rest of this post