Tablet Wars - AOL buys Techcrunch - MSN UK ditches Music downloads for Zune - Barcode scanning up 700%
Ramakrishnan Laxman
The 5-inch Dell Streak is available now, and Samsung’s 7-inch Galaxy Tab isn’t. Since the iPad started shipping in April, Apple has sold more than 3 million devices. In June, Dell introduced the Streak, a device billed as a tablet but priced like a phone. Samsung hopes to bring its tablet, the Galaxy Tab to market in time for holiday-season shopping. RIM announced its latest device, the 7-inch PlayBook, at its developer conference Monday.
TechCrunch Scooped Up by AOL
AOL announced Tuesday that it has purchased the influential technology blog TechCrunch for an undisclosed sum, adding it to their stable of content sites that range from the gadget blog Engadget to local news site Patch.com. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although AOL reportedly paid about $30 million for the popular technology blog.
News Corp. To Take Equity Stake In The Rubicon Project In Exchange For FAN
News Corp. (NSDQ: NWS) is prepping a deal to fold the Fox Audience Network (FAN) in with ad optimizer The Rubicon Project, with the deal set to be finalized within six weeks. Under the non-binding term sheet, News Corp. would take an equity stake in the post-merger Rubicon. We have learned the planned stake is 19.9 percent, similar to other property-for-equity swaps News Corp. has made. The arrangement comes a month after parent News Corp. announced plans to fold FAN into MySpace.
MSN UK Ditching Music Downloads Service For Zune Marketplace Links
MSN UK is killing off its short-lived MSN Music pay-for music replacement, in favour of Zune Marketplace, which is becoming Microsof’s de facto media service. To give its users music downloads, MSN UK had, until mid-2009, relied on a white-label partnership with Nokia’s OD2. But, when Nokia (NYSE: NOK) shuttered the service, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) built its own stop-gap, offering 10 singles for £7.99. The “beta” label had stayed on since then, and an unlimited streaming variant which was in closed beta never saw light of day publicly. Microsoft still isn’t bringing its Zune media player hardware outside of North America, but it has already rebadged its Xbox Live Video Marketplace movies service “Zune Marketplace” here, and is making Zune available on its Windows Phone 7 phones around the world.
Online Media Daily: Barcode Scanning Up 700% This YearThere were more barcode scans performed in a single month starting in July than in all of 2009, highlighting the technology's growth as an ad vehicle. Scanning via the company's barcode system has increased 700% from the start of 2010. By downloading the company's ScanLife application, users with a camera phone can get product information, coupons or other content via tags placed on product packaging, print ads or outdoor signs. The mobile barcode reader supports 1D and 2D codes as well as the company's proprietary EZcodes. Linking to a Web site was by far the most common type of action encouraged by a 2D code, with 85% driving traffic to a URL. Among traditional 1D, or UPC, codes, health and beauty products were the most popular category, making up 21% of scans, followed by groceries (14.4%), books (12.6%), and kitchen items (9.2%). ScanBuy said people are also actually making purchases through mobile devices, with books and electronics showing among the highest conversion rates.
Google's Schmidt: The Device Is Not Magical, It's The Servers Behind Them
Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is in the process of shipping a language translation service that will let people speak English into one end of the phone, and have it come out as German on the other end. “Is your phone so powerful to do that? No. It’s taking voice, digitizing it and sending it to the server, and it’s doing speak-to-text translation. It can be in half a second or in a quarter of a sec (which we think is too long). But how it works is immaterial to the person who is trying to communicate.”