Entertainment:
·
Sony Pictures has cancelled the production of several films
due to the cyber-attack which has left it unable to process payments
·
The Hobbit raked in $117.6MM in its box office debut and set
IMAX records
·
James Bond ‘Spectre’ script was stolen amidst the Sony hack
·
“The Throwaways”, a movie which follows a hacker (James
Caan) who uses his smarts to track down another cyber-attacker for the CIA, has
had its release pushed by a month on Sony's online video site Crackle.
·
Chris Hemsworth’s new movie “Blackhat” is extremely relevant
in the wake of Sony’s debacle
·
Brian Williams is staying put as NBC Nightly News' anchor, “for
years to come” the network announced Monday
·
With 13 bids, “Birdman” led nominations for the Critics’
Choice Movie Awards, followed by 11 for “The Grand Budapest Hotel”
·
Audiam, the company started to serve publishers and
publishing administrators to get them paid accurately from interactive
streaming music services, has raised an additional $1MM in funding from a group
of individual strategic investors
·
Xstream has launched a Loading Dock service for its
MediaMaker cloud-based video management platform
Tech:
·
Indiegogo has launched Indiegogo Life, a standalone service
that lets people raise money for emergencies, medical expenses, celebrations
and other important life events
·
The Cord Project is launching a new voice messaging app (VoiceByte
competitor)
·
Viber, the mobile messaging company, is seeing out 2014 with
arguably its most significant release to date: the launch of a social games
platform
·
Facebook no longer supports Bing, and will roll out its own
search engine tool
·
Palantir, the big data company that’s one of the Valley’s
most valuable, having secured clients like the NSA, FBI and CIA early on before
building up its private-sector customer base, has raised another $50MM,
according to a new SEC filing
·
Australian startup Inkl is hoping to fix journalism’s
strained business models with a ‘Spotify for news’ model that ditches the
unwelcoming and irritating single publication paywall in favor of aggregated
news content
·
LaunchpadLA, is officially shifting its model and getting
out of the startup accelerator market--handing over its space to General
Assembly
·
A pricing error on Amazon led some users to buy items for a
penny
·
France to ban UberPOP come the new year
·
Skype will now be able to translate calls in real-time
Deals:
·
Emerson announced that it has
agreed to sell its Power Transmission Solutions business unit to Regal Beloit
Corporation - the transaction is valued at $1.44B
·
PetSmart announced on Sunday that
it would sell itself to an investor group led by the private equity firm BC
Partners, in the biggest leveraged buyout of a company this year – $8.7B
·
Hearst, the privately held media
giant, said it would pay nearly $2B to buy an additional 30% of the Fitch
Group’s (credit ratings company) shares from Fimalac, a French holding company
Business:
·
Xiaomi is putting hard cash behind its smart home push after
investing over $200MM in appliance firm Midea
·
Please see below for today’s top tech funding stories
·
An appeals court is scheduled to consider whether Apple’s
pricing agreements with e-book publishers amounted to a deft market maneuver or
an illegal conspiracy
Exec Moves:
Retail:
Startups:
·
London fashion startup Snap
Fashion has extended its discovery platform into a visual search engine for
men’s clothes
Government:
·
Australia's government has forecast its budget deficit to
swell to A$40.4B ($33.2B) in the year to June
Other:
·
Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook
profile has come under attack from a large number of online trolls who are
taking advantage of the opportunity to leave comments, including stickers,
photos and other “meme” images, on the Facebook CEO’s public posts
·
The Sydney hostage crisis has
ended this morning, leaving 2 dead – the gunman and one hostage
·
Uber has found itself
embroiled in yet another PR disaster: spiking (surged) prices as the hostage
situation unfolded in Sydney
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