Wednesday, February 18, 2015

2.18.15

Entertainment:
·         Ray Super Remote takes the form of a touchscreen universal remote and takes all the ease and simplicity of a mobile OS, including apps and personalization, brings it to the TV industry
·         Please see below for an interesting article on how data will save music
·         Hulu today is introducing a new feature called Watchlist, designed to offer users a smarter and more personalized area featuring the shows you’re interested in viewing
·         Comcast said that in 2014 over 30% of its Xfinity TV subscribers used its TV Everywhere app ("Xfinity TV Go") on a monthly basis, representing a 20% year-over-year growth rate
·         NBC’s ‘Tonight Show’ rubbed salt in Comedy Central’s wound last night, inviting ‘Last Week Tonight’ host John Oliver to celebrate his new two-year contract with HBO announced by HBO earlier in the day
·         Jukin Media has launched a new video-distribution service that will provide its most popular new clips directly to online publishers - AOL, Yahoo, Complex, Flipps, Frequency, Rare.us and ViralNova have already signed up for the service
·         Lionsgate says that ‘Insurgent – Shatter Reality’ will work on the Samsung Gear VR
·         Please see below for Bob Weinstein’s letter to his brother Harvey
·         In its first foray into a distribution partnership, the Slamdance Film Festival is teaming with the ArcLight Cinemas theater in Hollywood to screen two films per month from this year’s festival
·         Disney's Maker Studios, DreamWorks Animation's Awesomeness, Big Frame and BroadbandTV Corp. were all slammed with lawsuits that aim to rip the lid off of unlicensed music on YouTube
·         Drake’s new album, ‘If You're Reading This It's Too Late’, set the record for most streams from an album in its debut week in the U.S. Songs from the album on Spotify
·         Please see below for how Airbnb’s Head of Global Hospitality plans to build an Expedia for festivals
·         Movistar TV, Canal+ and ONO, Spain's three largest pay-TV platforms, along with local cable operators Telecable and Euskaltel, have added channels from Viacom International Media Networks (VIMN) following a major distribution deal which strengthens the company's presence in the country
·         UK marketers are increasingly embracing more sophisticated methods of targeting and execution, in particular multiscreen online video solutions, says research from Videology
Tech:
·         Snapchat is looking to raise as much as $500MM in a new round of funding, currently valuing the company as high as $19B
·         Vitesse Semiconductor, which develops a range of networking semiconductors, said today that it has rolled out a new reference design specifically aimed at the Internet-of-Things (IoT) market
·         Facebook wants its marketing partners to know it doesn’t even start counting those ads — or charge for them — until an actual human being sees them
·         The soon-to-be-released Apple Watch, the company’s most ambitious new product in years, won’t include several hoped-for health tracking tools
·         Dan Coolidge and JP Benini just launched a Kickstarter for a toy dinosaur toy driven by IBM Watson, the machine learning service based on the company’s Jeopardy-playing cognitive system
·         Breathometer and Uber are teaming up to get the drunks home safely
·         EMC and Hippo announced a partnership today in which Hippo, an open source web content management platform, will integrate with EMC Documentum, EMC’s enterprise content management software
·         Microsoft officially announced at the Strata Conference today, the general availability of the Azure Machine Learning service for big data processing in the cloud
·         Trello, the collaborative task management software, has topped 7 million users, with 120,000 new users joining the platform every week
·         Microsoft announced that it’s further opening up its Office software suite to work with other third-party cloud services, starting with an update to its Office iOS applications that will allow access to iCloud and Box
·         The Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) gives a representative sample of adults from each country a computerized test, asking questions on the interpretation of statistics and ability to use technology
·         Digital news website Mashable is to launch an Indian unit in partnership with India.com - India.com is a joint venture between Zee Entertainment Enterprises and Penske Media Corporation
·         Solyndra's old facility is getting a new tenant: Elon Musk's SolarCity
·         Uber has filed a second complaint to the European Commission against a French law that the online ride-booking service says favors regular taxis at its expense
Deals:
·         China’s Tencent Holdings has acquired a majority stake in Miniclip to expand its presence in Europe
·         Fitmob, with the acquisition of Gymsurfing, will be adding day passes to its portfolio of fitness options, as well as access to more than 200 gyms in 20 cities in the U.S. and Canada
·         The French media group Vivendi said on Wednesday that Altice had offered to buy its 20 percent stake in Numericable-SFR for $4.4B
·         Japan’s national postal service is buying the largest private package and freight delivery company in Australia, Toll Holdings, for $6.5B AUD
·         Executives at the Blackstone Group said they were expecting to spend up to $200MM on the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, which the firm bought for $1.73B in December from Deutsche Bank
·         Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. exited a $3.7B investment in Exxon Mobil Corp. amid a slump in oil prices
Business:
·         Rolls-Royce will be making an SUV
·         GM announced that it will soon use wind to power its manufacturing operations
·         Google is joining SoftBank, Tiger Global and other investors in India, after the company revealed that it is in the process of setting up an office for its Google Capital fund
·         Sony announced its latest corporate reshuffle which will see it focus on its PlayStation and entertainment businesses, as well as its CMOS image sensor business, as it bids to return to healthy profit levels by 2018
·         Under Armour signed a deal with Muhammad Ali
·         Bank of America reportedly cut CEO Brian Moynihan's pay by 7% in 2014 to $13MM, as its full-year profit fell 58% on higher legal settlements
·         Movie theater operator Cinemark Holdings on Wednesday reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter financials
Exec Moves:
Retail:
·         Tesco has appointed John Allan as its new chairman, succeeding Richard Broadbent who said in October that he would step down in the wake of the supermarket's £263MM profit overstatement
Startups:
·         Stop!t is an app that lets students anonymously report bullying
·         Los Angeles-based Firefly Games has raised $8MM in a Series A financing round, to help bring Asian mobile games to the Western market
·         WorldRemit, which is an online money transfer business enabling migrants and expats to send money using a variety of payment options, raised $100MM in its Series B
Government:
·         Global stocks advanced today amid fresh optimism that Greece and its eurozone creditors may reach a compromise agreement on its bailout
·         China may merge its state-owned oil companies to create giants that will be more efficient and capable of taking on big overseas rivals
·         Spencer Zwick, the top fundraising aide for Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign, announced today that he was urging 2016 Republican candidates to support immigration reform this year
Other:
·         After a powerful winter storm gripped much of the eastern United States, another blast of Arctic air is expected to freeze half of the country later this week
·         The NFL says it has found a New England Patriots staffer who tried to sneak an unapproved football into the “Deflategate” game

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