Entertainment:
·
Amazon has upped its streaming game, offering up 4K or Ultra
HD resolution for certain movies and TV titles to Prime subscribers via Amazon
Instant Video
·
Tim Draper is looking for entrepreneurs between the ages of
18-28 to be on his new Silicon Valley reality show
·
Bop.fm, which lets you share your music with friends
regardless of what music-streaming service they use, today launches its first
mobile app
·
Fuhu, the maker of the popular nabi children's tablets, is
planning a big launch into the streaming movie, music, and media market this
week
·
RealD has licensed some of its technology to theater screen
manufacturer Harkness Screens International Limited
·
Discovery has unveiled its first distribution deal with Hulu
·
Clearleap has announced a cloud-based multiscreen sports
solution to support live-streamed games, near real-time highlights/clips and
personalized
·
The hackers who broke into Sony Pictures’ computers released
new files and warned the studio not to show “The Interview”
o
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-08/sony-hackers-demand-studio-stop-showing-the-interview-.html
·
The Starz CEO was evasive when asked he is can’t find a
buyer
·
The SAG-AFTRA board of directors has voted overwhelmingly to
approve the new Network Television Code, the union's contract covering
nonprimetime TV shows
·
Fox has teamed with global youth media company VICE Media to
form VICE Films, a joint venture to develop, produce and distribute films from
emerging directors culled from VICE's content creation initiatives
·
The first photo from the Bond 24 ‘Spectre’ set has been
released
·
Jeff Skoll's Participant Media and the Doha Film Institute
have dissolved the $100MM revolving film fund they had jointly announced during
the 2013 Berlin Film Festival
·
Discovery Communications would like to do a deal with
Netflix to stream its programming over the popular company's site - but the two
sides have yet to come to terms on “value”
·
Beyoncé is Facebook’s most talked about celeb
·
Please see below for an article on TiVo’s poor business
choices
·
Please see below for an article penned by Donna Karan and
her fashion in the ‘80s
·
Canal+ says its series channel has altered the VOD
consumption habits of its audience during the 12 months it's been on air
·
Netflix is seeing a year-over-year average performance
increase across the ISP landscape for video delivery, with significant
increases in average speed in the US and Europe for November
·
Telestream has launched Vantage Cloud Subscriptions, a
transcoding and file-based workflow automation service for Amazon Web Services
Tech:
·
Autism Speaks has partnered with Google to sequence the
genomes of 10,000 people on the autism spectrum along with their family members
to crack the genetic code of autism
·
Ubuntu has launched an alpha version of its new “snappy”
edition of Ubuntu Core with transactional updates that is specifically geared
toward container farms, large Docker deployments and platform-as-a-service
environments
·
Tumblr has added a new discovery feature to help users find
what’s interesting to them on the service, which is reportedly the internet’s
fastest growing social media platform
·
YouTube has updated its experience on the Apple TV, bringing
the full video catalog from the web to its software for the Apple media
streamer
·
Apple has begun to transfer intellectual property over from
PrimeSense, the Israeli firm it acquired last year, to focus on its Kinect 3D
motion sensing camera
·
Amazon, pushing hard to pick up more business during the
holiday season, has launched a bidding option ‘Make an Offer’
·
Pebble is taking its smartwatch beyond English after it
announced new updates that will make its interface and app store available in
French, German and Spanish
·
The City of Portland is suing Uber
·
MediaSpike, a startup that helps developers place products
in broadly popular games for iOS and Android, thinks that virtual reality is
going to have a broad audience across these different use cases
o
http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/08/mediaspike-gave-us-a-quick-look-at-native-ads-in-virtual-reality/
·
Google launched a new feature in the YouTube Audio Library
that allows uploaders who use copyrighted music to see exactly what will happen
to their videos before they upload them
·
KTplay, a mobile social network that was spun out of Yodo1
and funded in part by Alibaba, now has 4 million daily active users.
·
Doximity says its growth accelerated in 2014 to over 400,000
members now, making Doximity the largest secure network of doctors
Deals:
·
Yandex (the Google of Russia) has
bought Sovetnik, a Russian startup that has developed an e-commerce browser
extension of the same name
·
CollegeHumor is reportedly looking
to be sold for $100MM
Business:
·
Please see below for today’s top tech funding stories
·
Teneo, a corporate advisory firm with a broad array of
businesses, has secured backing from the big private equity firm BC Partners
·
Starboard Value took outspokenness to a new level when it
published a blistering 294-page critique of nearly every business practice at
Darden Restaurants
·
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan on Monday sued Deutsche
Bank, claiming that it owed the United States government about $190MM in unpaid
taxes, penalties and interest
·
Janus Capital Group Inc. has rallied its sales force around
Bill Gross, helping to push the assets in his new mutual fund past the $1
billion mark in November
Exec Moves:
·
Snapchat has hired a high profile
investment banker, Imran Khan (Head of Investment Banking at Credit Suisse), as
its Chief Strategy Officer
·
Capitol Music Group has hired
industry veterans Jennie Boddy and Erin Cooney as vice presidents of publicity
under Ambrosia Healy, the company's head of media strategy and relations
·
Salesforce.com has tapped Google
veteran Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of its YouTube video unit, to its board of
directors
Retail:
Startups:
·
Didi Dache, one of China’s two
dominant taxi app firms, announced that it had closed $700MM in its Series D
round
Government:
·
Change.org has raised $25MM in its Series C from some of the
most prominent people in tech/media in the world to bring social change to our
democracy
·
An IMF mission will visit Kiev today to begin talks with the
country's newly elected government over a $17B loan package that may need to be
ramped up due to the separatist crisis in Ukraine's east
·
A program of "enhanced interrogation" used by the
CIA on terrorism suspects after the 2001 attacks was far more brutal than the
agency admitted
Other:
·
Please see below for an
interesting article on the quest to build a 1,000 MPG rocket-powered car
·
LeBron James committed a faux
pas when he placed his hand on the shoulder on Kate Middleton
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