Entertainment:
·
YouTube announced it has finally switched from serving videos
with Adobe Flash to using its HTML5 video player
·
The Berlin International Film Festival, which opens Feb 5, has
announced its international jury line-up
·
ITV has commissioned a new Bear Grylls adventure series
·
NYC accounted for $19.7B in entertainment and media spending
in 2014, ahead of Tokyo’s $19.5B, according to a report out today from research
and consulting firm PwC
·
Media chiefs will need all of their persuasive powers to win
over the Wall Street jury eager for clarity on this key question during the Q4
earnings season that unofficially kicks off this Thursday, when Viacom reports
·
Paramount has rethought its plan to open the next Mission:
Impossible sequel this coming Christmas, instead moving it up to the heart of
summer
·
The first teaser trailer for Fox’s new Fantastic Four film has
been released
o
http://variety.com/2015/film/news/fantastic-four-trailer-michael-b-jordan-miles-teller-1201415273/
·
Hong Kong actor-director Vicki Zhao and her husband have
bought a $400MM stake in Alibaba Pictures, the film and TV unit of the
e-commerce giant Alibaba, as the group warned of significant losses because of
production delays and falling advertising revenues
·
Indian animation group, Toonz Entertainment is to set up a new
unit in New Zealand
·
The ongoing political battle between Live Nation and
Nederlander-AEG to run Los Angeles' iconic Greek Theatre has taken yet another
turn that could have a major impact on which promoter ultimately wins the bid
to run the historic Griffith Park venue
·
Richard Friedman (represented Sterling in the Clippers
lawsuit) is targeting Hans Zimmer, 20th Century Fox, Sony Music and various
companies connected to the film 12 Years a Slave for alleging incorporating a
copyrighted music composition into the film's main musical theme
·
By exclusively launching Cinemax GO for DirecTV subs, HBO
Latin America continues to expand its TV everywhere offer throughout the
region, enabling audiences to watch online content via Android and iOS devices
·
A much wider ecosystem will act as a strong driver of 4K/Ultra
HD services in 2015, leading to at least six new services in the year according
to Fairmile West research
Tech:
·
Facebook has launched an alternate, slimmed-down version of
its app called Facebook Lite, designed for low-end Android phones used
primarily in the developing world
·
Twitter began offering two new tools: one for taking, editing,
and sharing videos on your mobile phone, and another for trading private
messages among groups of people
·
Uber said it would limit/cap prices during the storm, following
a policy developed with New York Attorney General Schneiderman last year
·
Snapchat now has a Discover feature, which will let you see
content from brands like ESPN, CNN, Vice and Warner Music
·
The Prynt case, which lets you print photos directly from your
phone, is now available for pre-order on Kickstarter
·
Opera’s former CEO Jon von Tetzchner is launching the first
preview of Vivaldi today, a new Chromium-based browser that is squarely aimed
at power users
·
Amazon is testing a new service that could help it and its
publishing partners drive more traffic (and, importantly, purchases) from
customers on mobile devices
·
Wickr is launching a photo feed to compete with the likes of
Instagram and Facebook
·
Facebook went offline across much of the world for 45 minutes
late Monday (Tuesday in European and Asian time zones)
·
Xiaomi's new flagship smartphone, the Mi Note, sold out in 3
minutes
·
After a year of reported five-fold growth in revenue and
ridership, Lyft today announced a number of metrics and milestones as well as
initiatives for 2015
·
The Moment Case has an integrated mount for Moment's
wide-angle and telephoto lenses released last year, as well as mounting points
for neck or wrist straps
Deals:
·
Pixelapse, a startup incubated by Y
Combinator and StartX, has been acquired by cloud storage company Dropbox
·
Ele.me, a food delivery service
based in Shanghai, announced this afternoon (link via Google Translate) that it
has raised $350MM in Series E funding from CITIC, Tencent, JD.com,
Dianping.com, and Sequoia Capital
·
Online technology training service
Pluralsight has acquired the Orlando, Fla.-based Code School, which offers
dozens of instructional courses and videos for developers both online and via
mobile apps for $36MM
·
Lattice Semiconductor is paying
$600MM in cash, a price that is 23.7 percent above Silicon Image’s closing
price on Monday
·
Sunrise Communications expected to
price its I.P.O. at between $65 and $88 a share, and to begin trading on the
Swiss exchange in the coming weeks
·
The multinational law firm Dentons
announced on Tuesday that it would merge with the Dacheng Law Offices of China,
creating a firm with the world’s largest number of lawyers
·
Box has landed a contract with
pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca which will deploy the service to 51,000 users
in 100 countries
Business:
·
60% of WIRED readers said they don’t plan on buying an iPad,
mainly because their laptops and smartphones already had them covered
·
Apple has topped smartphone shipment numbers in China in Q4
2014, according to analyst firm Canalys
·
Apple has a new patent (via AppleInsider) that covers modular
accessories for mobile devices like the iPhone, which include a physical
gamepad with action buttons, D-pads and analog joysticks
·
The Google Lunar Xprize wants to do something that has never
been done before in the history of mankind: land a private spacecraft on the
moon that can travel at least 500 meters and transmit both high-definition
video and imagery back to Earth
·
Pre-roll is the most common way advertisers are buying video
ads today, however, according to a study by research firm MetrixLab, 94% of
viewers skip pre-roll ads
·
Hershey's has blocked British-made Cadbury chocolate from
entering the US
·
Microsoft reported a fall in its quarterly profit that was in
line with Wall Street forecasts, as the company struggled with the impact of a
strong U.S. dollar and reduced demand for Windows software due to slumping
personal computer sales
o http://seekingalpha.com/news/2244126-microsoft-minus-3-percent-windows-revenue-under-pressure?ifp=0
·
Carnival has signed a memorandum of understanding with China
Merchants Group to explore the creation China’s first domestic line, and will
also collaborate on port development in the country
·
IBM dismissed on Monday a Forbes magazine report claiming the
technology firm is preparing to cut about 26% of its workforce, which would represent
its biggest-ever layoffs
Exec Moves:
·
Former Ryan Seacrest Prods. CEO Adam
Sher has joined ITV Studios-owned production company Leftfield Entertainment as
Chief Creative Officer
·
SGN, a mobile games studio, has
hired entertainment marketer Josh Brooks — formerly head of marketing at
Myspace — as senior VP of brand strategy and marketing with an eye toward
striking game-development deals with studios, producers and celebrities
Retail:
Startups:
·
Nilas, the startup founded by
Dropbox and MIT alums, previously known as Inbox and focused on offering
developers a better API for building email client applications, has raised $8MM
in Series A funding
·
Fuse, an Oslo and now Palo
Alto-based startup offering a iOS and Android app development platform, emerged
from stealth today while also announcing $2.8MM in new funding as it heads to
launch
·
APUS Group, a seven-month-old
Chinese company that develops utility apps for Android, has confirmed that it
has raised $100MM in new funding
·
Roadie is unveiling its Uber-like
marketplace for the shipping industry today
·
Curiyo, a company that makes
software which consumers, bloggers and publishers use to enhance an online
article with subtle links that direct you to useful facts and other
information, has raised an additional round of just under $1MM in funding
·
Swyp, a new smart digital card that
stores your credit and loyalty cards, predicts which credit cards users want to
pay with
Government:
·
Iran is no longer using the US dollar in foreign-trade
transactions and is replacing it with other currencies, the deputy governor at
the Iranian Central Bank Gholami Kamyab said,
·
Democrats in the U.S. Senate blocked the Keystone XL pipeline
bill from moving forward on Monday, prolonging the chamber’s debate over the
project
Other:
·
Please see below for an interesting article on Rodney Mullen
and how he is involved in the Silicon Valley scene from his pro skateboarding
past
·
According to ProFootballTalk's Mike Florio, this locker-room
assistant took the bag of game balls for the AFC Championship Game from the
officials after they were measured, stopped in the bathroom for 90 seconds, and
then went to the field.
·
New York officials told residents to stay at home as a
blizzard forecasters call “life-threatening” may dump as much as two feet of
snow from New York to Boston
·
Bob Bardo, a longtime production executive at dick clark
prods, has died
·
On the 70th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation, read this
survivor’s searing essay
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