Entertainment:
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Amazon today announced that its Fire TV streaming set-top box
and HDMI stick now support Sling TV, the subscription-based live TV service
that offers users an alternative to cable that streams via the web for $20 per
month
·
Line has announced its first investment from the LINE Life
Global Gateway Fund – they’re putting an undisclosed amount of money into
3Minute, a Japanese online video production startup
·
Warner Bros., DC Entertainment, and cloud graphics firm Otoy
are showing off a new kind of immersive virtual reality experience today dubbed
“holographic video”
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http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/12/warner-bros-and-otoy-preview-the-batcave-using-holographic-video/
·
Amazon Studios is bringing back ‘Sigmund and the Sea Monsters’
the 1970's children's television series
·
Paramount Home Entertainment has agreed to let Universal
Pictures Home Entertainment distribute its DVD and Blu-ray discs in overseas
markets where Paramount has an office
·
New Form Digital – the hybrid video-production company whose
backers include Discovery, Brian Grazer and Ron Howard – announced a second
incubator series today, commissioning short films from 10 online creators
·
Discovery has renewed its carriage deal with Cablevision, but
Comcast awaits
·
HBO CEO Richard Plepler on Wednesday lauded a subscription VOD
deal that the Time Warner-owned premium network struck last year with Amazon
Prime covering older shows, while Jeff Bewkes, the CEO of parent company Time
Warner, outlined how his team wants to win back cord-cutters
·
FremantleMedia said on Thursday that it was taking a 25% stake
in Corona TV, a newly created TV production company from filmmaking duo Richard
Johns and Rupert Jermyn
·
Six days after stepping down as co-chairman of Sony Pictures
Entertainment, Amy Pascal broke her silence on Wednesday at the Women in the
World conference in San Francisco during a candid interview with journalist
Tina Brown
·
As it looks to grow its viewership of the upcoming
“WrestleMania” pay-per-view next month, WWE has locked down new distribution
deals for its WWE Network in Canada and the Middle East
·
The Backstreet Boys tour will play arenas in four Australian
cities, beginning May 8 in Melbourne
·
Buy three months of Sling TV and get a free Amazon or Roku
streaming stick
·
The UK's Ultra HD market is about to enter a rapid and
significant growth phase according to research from GfK
·
A strong performance from HBO, thanks in the main to the
mega-popular ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘True Detective’, was a key driver in a
strong fiscal 2014, revenue-wise at least, for Time Warner
Tech:
·
Lego X, which uses networked plastic bricks to build 3-D
project files, comes from the same team of designers behind Gravity Sketch -
the Oculus Rift program that lets you draw in 3-D using augmented reality
·
Pinterest is teaming up with Apple on a new product called App
Pins, which will allow the company’s users to pin apps to their Pinterest
boards just like they would an apple cobbler recipe
·
ESPN fans will be happy to learn that today the “worldwide
leader in sports” is introducing the first version of its mobile news app that
will work on iPad, unifying the reading experience across desktop, smartphone,
and now Apple tablets
·
Kantar, the research division of advertising giant WPP, has
entered into a global alliance with comScore, the company that measures traffic
and other audience metrics of online and mobile properties
·
Alibaba is continuing to build its portfolio of software
services, with DingTalk, a collaboration and messaging app for small-to-medium
sized businesses
·
Facebook revealed the final piece in its scalable data
redesign today, one that completes its vision of redefining traditional
hardware and software to make it more flexible to meet the needs of Facebook’s
scale
·
Slack passes 500K daily users and 135K paying customers in
time for its first birthday
·
SpaceX said yesterday that it successfully "soft"
landed its first booster stage for its Falcon rocket in the ocean, landing
vertically and within 10 meters of its target.
·
Activist investor and major Apple shareholder Carl Icahn
announced that the iPhone maker's stock should be trading at $216, just four
months after setting a $203 target in an open letter four months ago
·
Elon Musk’s Hyperloop startup has a dream team and $8.5MM in
funding
·
Facebook has introduced a relevance score for ads this week
·
Please see below for an interesting article on how Apple’s App
Store rankings are manipulated
Deals:
·
Twitter has agreed to acquire Niche,
a startup that facilitates advertising deals for social media stars, for around
$30MM
·
Social marketing company Insightpool
has acquired a startup called Next Principles
·
Expedia announced an agreement to
acquire Orbitz for $1.6B— or $12 per share — in cash, a premium of 29% on
Orbitz’s current share price
·
Microsoft is buying the mobile
productivity reputation it seemed disinclined to build for itself for so many
years, and the latest addition to the roster is Sunrise, the calendar app
Business:
·
Electric car manufacturer Tesla reported earnings today following
the bell, including $1.1B in non-GAAP revenue, and an adjusted loss per share
of $0.13. On a GAAP basis, using normal accounting methods, Tesla had a wider
loss of 86 cents per share, and revenue of $957MM
·
Yahoo’s plan for a tax-free spinoff of its stake in Alibaba
looks logical, but a Reuters Breakingviews calculator suggests that investors
are attaching a 34% discount to the company’s Alibaba shares – assuming, that
is, Yahoo’s core business is worth something
·
"Cisco is not just back, it’s back with a
vengeance," said chief executive John Chambers, after the company reported
impressive FQ2 results following five straight quarters of slumping profit and
sluggish sales
·
South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission is now investigating
Qualcomm, adding to the antitrust woes of the U.S. chipmaker following a record
$975MM fine it agreed to pay China earlier this week
Exec Moves:
·
Viacom International Media Networks
exec, William Tan, has been appointed Managing Director of Endemol Shine China
·
Vice Media said Ellis Jones has been
named Vice Magazine’s editor-in-chief — following the resignation of EIC Rocco
Castoro — and appointed Alex Miller, who previously oversaw the company’s U.K.
content, to the position of global head of content
Retail:
Startups:
·
Jet, the premier e-commerce company
offering users a premium browsing experience, raised $140MM in a convertible
note from Google, Goldman Sachs, Bain, Accel Partners, and more (valuation is
pegged at $600MM)
Government:
·
The International Monetary Fund is “very close” to an
agreement to bail out Ukraine’s war-damaged economy, Managing Director Christine
Lagarde said
Other:
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