Thursday, October 30, 2014

10.30.14

Entertainment:      
·         MPAA bans Google Glass and other wearable cameras from movie theaters
·         Sony and Alibaba are in co-financing talks, and it is stated that the movies would be in both Chinese and English, and aimed at global audiences. Alibaba would handle distribution in China, and Sony elsewhere
·         Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch says that the industry needs Hulu to be “a serious competitor” to Netflix and Amazon
·         Dreamworks Animation shares are down over 5% today after released its mixed Q3 report
·         Universal Pictures has slotted Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1950s-set Hollywood film ‘Hail, Caesar!’ for release February 5, 2016
·         Fox’s broadcast of the 3-2 win by the San Francisco Giants over the Kansas City Royals got a surging 15.2/24 rating
·         'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay' could top $150MM in its US debut
·         Vice Media and Canada's Rogers Communications, a media and communications conglomerate, have formed a $100MM joint venture to create a multimedia production studio
·         Sydney-based animation and VFX studio Animal Logic is in advanced negotiations with Warner Bros. to secure production duties on the next three Lego movies
·         The Foo Fighters’ world tour has added a string of stadium dates across Australia and New Zealand
·         Please see below for an interesting WSJ article on why Hollywood loves Chris Nolan
·         YouNow is a live video site that is gaining traction in the market
·         More than a third of Americans interested in standalone HBO
Tech:
·         Tim Cook, Apple CEO, has publicly announced that he is gay
·         Please see below for an interesting article on how Facebook is making a big push to keep content online and make it easily accessible on their site
·         Viber has been blocked in China
·         Mixify, the live streaming service connecting big-ticket DJs to clubs around the world, is seeing its Clubcast service take off with major DJs signing on to the platform
·         YouTube can now play videos at 60 frames per second
·         About.me’s new ‘Intro’ app aims to replace the business card
·         In Tumblr’s new update, the blogging platform is growing the size of video and image display by 40 pixels and adding a “quick compose” button for posts
·         Spotify updates its iPad app with a fresh redesign and new curation features
·         Pandora ranked as No. 1 among music apps for most downloads and total revenue generated in September, according to App Annie’s new Music App Index report
·         Microsoft has launched its first wearable called the "Microsoft Band"
·         Samsung Electronics reports that its net profit nearly halved during Q3, as its mobile business continued to face heavy competition from low-cost Chinese smartphone makers
·         Facebook loses $24,420 a minute during outages
·         Google Play Books is now a lot better for reading nonfiction titles like textbooks
·         Please see below for reviews on the new GoPro cameras
Deals:
·         Lenovo has completed its $2.91B acquisition of Motorola from Google
·         Next Games acquires mobile game studio Helsinki GameWorks
·         Abbott paid $250MM plus milestones for Topera Medical and its cardiac arrhythmia mapping technology
·         Greene King has offered to acquire the Spirit Pub Company for about $1.2B in cash and stock
Business:
·         Please see below for today’s top tech funding stories
·         Global Eagle Entertainment, the developer of in-flight wireless and entertainment systems for airlines, has partnered with  satellite operator SES, to bring Ku-band satellite bandwith to the company's system
·         Media, finance and automotive brands continue to lead online video advertising adoption, according to new data from MediaRadar
·         Apollo Global Management reported on Thursday that its third-quarter profit declined sharply, weighed down by a loss in its private equity business
·         Goldman Sachs is at odds with its fellow Alibaba advisers after it awarded a “neutral” rating to the Chinese ecommerce group’s shares with a price target well below those of the other banks most closely involved in the initial public offering last month
Exec Moves:
·         Sony will appoint SVP Hiroki Totoki as the new president of Sony Mobile Communications
·         Jeremy Gordon, Twitter’s head of product engineering, and Adam Kinney, a four-year veteran leading the analytics group, are leaving the company
Retail:
Startups:
·         Minted, a social commerce company that crowdsources graphic designs and content from a global design community, raised $38MM in its Series D
Government:
Other:
·         At least two people area dead after a plane crashed into a two-story building at the Mid-Continent Airport in Wichita, Kansas


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