Friday, April 3, 2015

4.3.15

Entertainment:
·         Showtime and HBO are charging $90 for the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight
·         Digital Domain Holdings and Immersive Media are partnering in a joint venture called IM360 to create hardware, software and actual shows for the intriguing new world of virtual-reality entertainment, 3-D video that surrounds a viewer and provides a completely enveloping visual experience
·         “Furious 7” turbo-charged theaters last night — including nearly all 365 Imax screens — to push the total prize money for Universal Pictures to $15.8MM at 3,069 theaters
·         Less than 24 hours after reports were leaked to the press that Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrell have completed a top-secret TV movie for Lifetime, the two have announced that they were not going forward with the project
·         CAA filed a multi-claim complaint today against UTA and former CAA agents Greg Cavic and Greg McKnight, asking restraining orders stopping any services to those new clients plus a variety of damages
·         Netflix said today that “House of Cards” will be back for a fourth season in 2016
·         Dish Network, the No. 2 satellite TV service in the U.S., announced that DishWorld, its live-streaming, multi-language TV service launched in 2012, will be rebranded “Sling International.”
·         HBO, ahead of the premiere of season two of tech-startup spoof “Silicon Valley,” is teaming with Amazon’s Twitch videogame-casting service for a promo event that will include a free stream of the first season’s pilot episode
·         Brazilian banking giant Bradesco has announced a partnership with Universal Music Group to create a new streaming music service exclusively for its credit card holders
·         See below for 15 new trailers that were released this week – Spectre, Mad Max, Fantastic Four and more
·         A “Groundhog Day” musical will hit Broadway in 2017
·         European Union antitrust regulators are investigating Apple’s deals with record labels and online music streaming services to see if it is blocking rivals’ access to its planned music streaming platform
·         Tapping into a growing trend, media and technology company BroadbandTV (BBTV) has signed an exclusive partnership with YouTube analytics platform Social Blade.
Tech:
·         HiSmart, a new bag from Chinese design company Lepow, is built around that idea of streamlining interactions – this could be more useful than a smartwatch
·         Reedsy just launched author profiles on its website where writers can collect and showcase their work on a single page
·         Publisher HarperCollins is trying to go its own way as its contract with Amazon lapses this year
·         Nebula, makers of an OpenStack appliance designed to simplify the complexities of installing an OpenStack instance, shut its doors yesterday
·         Today, Vine released a slew of updates to Window Phone users including new editing functions, messaging capabilities, and loop counts
·         Oracle’s new ID Graph weaves together offline data from its recent acquisition, Datalogix, and from other sources to better solve the marketer’s dilemma of tracking the same user across devices and communication channels
·         Samsung Electronics Co. will manufacture the main chip in Apple Inc.’s next iPhone model, regaining a customer previously lost to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
·         BuzzFeed's founder used to write Marxist theory and it explains BuzzFeed perfectly
·         IBM has uncovered a sophisticated fraud scheme run by a well-funded Eastern European gang of cyber criminals that uses a combination of phishing, malware and phone calls that the technology company says has netted more than $1M from large and medium-sized U.S. companies
Deals:
·         Lux Capital plans to announce that it has closed its latest investment fund at $350MM to invest in science start-ups
·         Twitter has acquired TenXer, a software startup that helps companies manage their engineering projects
Business:
·         Tesla has reported its best ever quarter, shipping 10,030 cars in Q1 2015, representing a 55% increase on the same period last year
·         San Diego-based Qualcomm said Thursday that it is doubling the size of its QPrize annual investment funding competition, and will now award $250,000 in convertible note financing to regional winners, with an additional $250,000 to grand prize winners
·         Secret contracts, covert real-estate deals, scurrying around after nightfall to avoid detection – see below for how far big-bank brokers are prepared to go when they plan to go independent
·         Bill Ackman, Dan Loeb and Barry Rosenstein — all of whom reported full first-quarter numbers this week — are outpacing the broader stock indexes
·         The New York Times is launching an unexpectedly large 32-page Men's Style section today
·         Warren Buffett's affordable home-building empire “Clayton Homes” may not be as pure as PR would suggest
·         U.S. employers sharply slowed their hiring in March to the weakest pace in more than a year, the latest sign that the economy stumbled in early 2015 - unemployment was flat at 5.5%
Exec Moves:
·         Michael De Luca has left Sony and is headed to Universal Pictures, where he is expected to sign a new producing deal
·         A list of moves and shakes across the music business, including Madison Square Garden, ASCAP, Def Jam, Stingray and more
Startups:
·         Online ticket sales startup SeatGeek has raised $62MM in Series C funding
·         On-demand shipping startup Shyp is raising around $50MM at a valuation of $250MM
·         Bushytail Health is a new app that will use gambling’s natural appeal to help diabetics––and possibly other chronic-disease patients––manage their health issues
·         Koko, an upcoming app based on an MIT experiment, is designed to build the world's first social network for dealing with depression
Government:
·         Mr. Emanuel’s challenger, Jesús Garcia, is raising questions about the Democratic Chicago mayor’s top supporter, Kenneth Griffin, a Reagan-Republican billionaire
·         Iranians celebrated after negotiators reached a framework for a nuclear accord
·         Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Friday that any final agreement with Iran concerning its nuclear program must include "a clear and unambiguous Iranian commitment of Israel's right to exist”
Other:
·         An autonomous car drove across country
·         California oil producers used 214 acre-feet of water, equivalent to nearly 70 million gallons, in the process of fracking for oil and gas in the state last year, less than previously projected
·         Glenn Beck is going to launch a women’s fashion line
·         On his website Thursday, George R.R. Martin released a chapter from the book “Winds of Winter”



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