Tuesday, December 9, 2014

12.9.14

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”
·         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
·         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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