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– YouTube has begun enforcing a 16-month-old change in its terms of service that requires device manufacturers to become “strategy partners” in order to display YouTube videos on televisions.
– Digital music students create a crowdsourced album within the 140-character confines of Twitter by writing short strings of code that can be translated into songs.
– From the “Now you know how it feels” department: The Swedish online retailer that had trademarked a near replica of The Pirate Bay’s iconic logo has agreed to withdraw registration of what has become an enduring symbol of online piracy after a Pirate Bay co-founder cried foul.
– Advertising was supposed to be music’s magic bullet, enabling fans to get the free music they’re going to find anyway while feeding copyright-holder coffers. Well, that dream is fading fast.
– Google hopes that it can find a creative legal solution that lets it create the library of tomorrow by scanning millions of books. Late Friday, it submitted a new proposal for paying authors, but is it enough to keep the feds from seeing a monopoly in the offing?
– Mobile app developers find that there’s a risk to being a little guy: Sometimes the corporation that controls the platform, like Google or Apple, will make your app obsolete.
– Verizon and AT&T are going to war: As it took direct aim at the 800-pound gorilla that is the iPhone with funny and cinematic TV ads for the Droid rollout last week, Verizon is also flanking AT&T about the reach of its 3G coverage with a growing repertoire of teasing commercials. AT&T is fighting back in court and, most recently, with a bland statement that aims to ’set the record straight on Verizon ads.’ Talk about asymmetric warfare.
– Chip makers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices settle all outstanding legal disputes, including antitrust litigation and patent licensing issues. Intel pays AMD $1.25 billion as part of the settlement.
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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Chip makers Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc said they have settled all outstanding legal disputes, including antitrust litigation and patent licensing issues.
Intel said on Thursday it will pay AMD $1.25 billion as part of the settlement, sending shares of AMD up nearly 30 percent.
The two companies also sealed a five-year cross license deal and said they would give up any claims of breach from their previous license agreement.
Competition authorities in Asia, Europe and the United States have taken action against Intel in recent years because of persistent complaints by AMD about the behavior of Intel, which makes 80 percent of the central processing units at the heart of personal computers.
“While the relationship between the two companies has been difficult in the past, this agreement ends the legal disputes and enables the companies to focus all of our efforts on product innovation and development,” AMD and Intel said in a joint statement.
AMD said it would drop all pending litigation including a case in U.S. District Court in Delaware and two cases pending in Japan. AMD will also withdraw all of its regulatory complaints worldwide.
As a result of the settlement, Intel adjusted its fourth-quarter outlook. The chip maker raised its spending forecast to $4.2 billion from $2.9 billion, and said its effective tax rate would be about 20 percent, down from 26 percent. Other expectations are unchanged, Intel said.
Shares of AMD jumped 23 percent to $6.55 in early trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Intel shares were halted.
(Reporting by David Lawsky and Tiffany Wu, Gerald E. McCormick, Dave Zimmerman)
– Employing a clever algorithm and a speedy production team, the company whips up dirt-cheap videos that capitalize on internet users’ queries.
e-Business, e-Commerce and e-Marketing Articles from Ecommerce Times
– Selling a home without a real estate agent can save thousands of dollars in commission fees, but it can also be a painstaking, confusing task. Foregoing an agent, however, is easier these days thanks to Web sites that help homeowners advertise their properties on the hottest real estate portals and even walk them through figuring out how to price their home to sell.
– The early indicators that Windows 7 is doing well seem to be piling up. CEO Steve Ballmer gave that perception a boost at the company’s annual shareholders meeting on Thursday, announcing that Microsoft “has already sold twice as many units of Windows 7 than any other operating system ever launched in a comparable time.” Do the early numbers indicate that Windows 7 may be strong enough to cheer the shareholders of other companies — namely, battered computer OEMs like Dell?
– Many companies would give up their right to right-click to be able to duplicate Apple’s success with iTunes. However, only one actually has the pieces already in place to do that, and its executives announced their intentions Thursday to take on Steve Jobs’ company with its own online content service.
– It’s fitting that the last stop on my tour of travel-planning Web sites for the E-Commerce Times was American Airlines. The site illustrates all of the problems that spurred this special look at travel sites in the first place. Travel sites have developed a reputation for being hard to navigate and poorly designed with cluttered user interfaces.
– CRM has lagged in the health insurance industry, but a major transformation is imminent. “There’s been a reluctance to make comprehensive investments in technology compared with other sectors,” said Gartner analyst Joanne Galimi. “Generally, the firms in the sector have been very tactical, only investing in specific areas — basically reacting to pain points.”
– European Union regulators said Friday that they have extended until Jan. 27 a deadline to wrap up their antitrust review of Oracle’s planned US$7.4 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems. The European Commission said Oracle had asked for more time “in order to have the opportunity to further develop its arguments in response to the Commission’s concerns.”
– From high-flying Internet pioneer to movie punchline: AOL’s nadir may have come when Nicole Kidman’s character in the 2004 remake of “The Stepford Wives” asks a group of husbands of robotic spouses where they work. “AOL,” answers one man. “Is that why the women are so slow?” Kidman responds. The joke offers cold comfort to the AOL employees who found out Thursday that one-third of the workforce may be let go.
– Salesforce.com is marrying its cloud computing bona fides with its growing expertise in collaboration in Salesforce Chatter, a new application and development platform. The company introduced the product at its Dreamforce tradeshow and conference under way in San Francisco.
– The Pink Ghetto is a largely invisible, often unmentioned and unacknowledged place littered with impediments to womens’ upward mobility in the workplace. Women in the Pink Ghetto do not get equal pay for equal work, are not offered the same opportunities as their male coworkers, are not promoted as quickly as men — or promoted at all.
– The health insurance industry, especially in the U.S., has a long way to go before it achieves a high level of performance in the use of customer relationship management tools. However, pressure is coming from market forces — including new government healthcare reform policies — that will compel improvements in health insurance CRM, whether insurance companies want it or not.
– California regulators have adopted the nation’s first energy-efficiency standards for televisions, a move that will eventually ban power-hungry sets from the state’s store shelves. Wednesday’s action by the California Energy Commission could lead the way in a general reform of standards for an industry increasingly focused on wide-view, flat-screen, high-definition sets.
– The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee has released a report slamming the online business practices of three direct marketing companies — Affinion, Vertrue and Webloyalty — along with hundreds of online Web sites and retailers that participate in these practices. Many of the participating retailers are well-known brand names, such as Classmates.com, Hotwire and 1-800-Flowers.com.
