Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) has bought OpenedHand, a mobile Linux development company that is based in London, England. OpenedHand will be powering low-power laptops and mobile devices through their Linux software stack built for Intel Atom processors. The developers that focus on building the Linux software stack is known as the Mobile Software Platform community.

“Opened Hand brings great expertise and technology in the area of user-interaction frameworks, improving Intel’s ability to address the unique challenges of enabling cutting edge UIs for these new class of devices,” stated an Intel spokesperson.

(more…)

Facebook has launched a new feature called Live Feed. This feature shows you what your friends are doing in real-time with the News Feed format. Everytime a new story is update a noise is made. This concept is similar to Twitter Search.

There are two modes of the Live Feed. The first mode is Log Mode, where the action that takes place is displayed in one line. The second mode is Full Stories. Full Stories displays a thumbnail if someone changed their profile picture or multiple thumbnails if a photo album was recently added. The time of the event taking place is Pacific Time by default.

Users that don’t have a lot of friends will not see as much live stream action. But then again people that don’t have a lot of friends don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook. For a video demo, check out AllFacebook.com.

“I hope he rots in jail,” stated Slash, former Guns N’ Roses guitarist. “It’s going to affect the sales of the record, and it’s not fair. The Internet is what it is, and you have to deal with it accordingly, but I think if someone goes and steals something, it’s theft.”

Kevin Cogill is a music blogger that resides in Culver City, Calif. Cogill leaked 9 unreleased tracks from the upcoming Guns N’ Roses album, “Chinese Democracy.” Cogill will either go to jail for 3 years or pay up to $250,000. Five FBI agents arrested Cogill at his apartment after he published the leaked tracks.

After Guns N’ Roses’ lawyers complained about the leaked tracks, Cogill immediately removed it this past June. Cogill was charged under with a 3 year old anti-piracy law that states that copyright work cannot be distributed on a computer network before the release.

Cogill used to work at Universal Music and currently works on a site called Crave Online. Cogill published the leaked songs on Antiquiet. Antiquiet published the news about their blogger’s imprisonment here.

The FBI questioned Cogill about where he got the music from. After Cogill asked the FBI whether his case would be closed, they told him that his troubles have not even begun.

Guns N’ Roses have been working on the “Chinese Democracy” album for over 10 years. Guns N’ Roses is currently signed with Geffen Records.

Related Link:
1. The L.A. Times

Peter Sabilla, an adjunct professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management at the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University runs a blog called shmula.com. On that blog, I found an interesting article that has a high-level map of the Apple iPhone supply chain.

Many of the iPhone components are built in Shenzhen, China and in Taiwan. Below is the high-level image:

So the materials built for the iPhone by the suppliers and sub-tier suppliers are relatively cheap. The reason why Apple is a large company today is because of the profit margins made by products like the Mac, iPhone, and iPod in the U.S.

In order to make even more money, the iPhone needs to go global but must be affordable to make sales in other countries. This is why the rumor that China Mobile Ltd. (NYSE:CHL) subsidizing the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) the iPhone makes sense. Many of the components that are being built for the iPhone is already being done overseas already.

According to the JLM Pacific Epoch, “The would-be mobile partners are nearing the end of talks that aim to
avoid passing on the relatively high price of iPhones to Chinese consumers by having Mobile subsidize the phones, said the insider.” The source of the news is a China Mobile insider.

Related Links:
1. PacificEpoch
2. MacDailyNews

Napster, Inc. (NASDAQ:NAPS) has hired UBS AG (NYSE:UBS) to help them with their proxy battle and to solicit an acquisition. Napster is a small competitor of iTunes and Amazon.com and was the talk of the tech town in the late 90’s/early 2000’s.

There are three shareholders that are looking to have the current Board of Napster ousted. Perry H. Rod, Thomas Sailors, and Kavan P. Singh are the three shareholders that are having a proxy battle with the current Board. Napster’s annual shareholder meeting is taking place on September 18. The Board is seeking to have Richard J. Boyko, Philip J. Holthouse and Robert Rodin re-elected.

The letter to shareholders is available after the jump.

(more…)

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced today that they will be acquiring Greenfield Online, Inc. (NASDAQ:SRVY) for roughly $486 million. Greenfield Online is an online survey company that collects opinions on products and services.

Greenfield is based in Wilton, Connecticut and also owns Ciao, a price comparison shopping website. Greenfield and Ciao will be integrated into Windows Live Search. Ciao has consumer reviews of books, DVDs, music, gadgets, mortgages, appliances, ISPs, etc. Ciao generates about 26.5 million unique visitors per month.

Microsoft will buy Greenfield through the purchase of all of Greenfield’s shares at $17.50 per share. Greenfield’s current stock price is $17.37 per share. Greenfield’s stock was at about $15.98 right before the announcement.

Greenfield has an Internet survey company that Microsoft intends to sell after the acqusition closes. Microsoft already found an unnamed buyer for the business. This is may have something to do with the news about Microsoft thinking of selling Avenue A/Razorfish to WPP.

Microsoft beat Quadrangle LLC to the acquisition of Greenfield. Quadrangle made an offer to acquire Greenfield at $15.50 per share. Greenfield published a press release stating that:
“Immediately prior to entry into the merger agreement with Microsoft it
had terminated its previously announced merger agreement with
affiliates of Quadrangle Group LLC.”

Greenfield will have to pay $5 million to kill the deal with Quadrangle.

Related Links:
1. Yahoo! Finance
2. Greenfield
3. Ciao

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and GeoEye Inc. (NASDAQ:GEOY) have signed a partnership regarding satellite imagery. GeoEye is launching the $502 million high-res GeoEye-1 satellite on September 4. The Google logo is also painted on the Delta II rocket that will be launching the new satellite. Currently the GeoEye-1 has the highest resolution color imagery. Google did not pay to have the logo added to the rocket.

“Google is interested in collecting the highest quality satellite imagery available and as a symbol of this commitment has agreed to put the company logo on the first stage of our launch vehicle,” stated Mark Brender, a spokesman at GeoEye.

GeoEye’s satellite imagery will have images that are 0.41 meters in black/white resolution and 1.65 meters in color. GeoEye can only offer 0.5 meter images to the public under government regulations.

“The combination of GeoEye’s high-resolution, map-accurate satellite imagery from GeoEye-1 and Google’s search and display capabilities provides users with access to rich, interactive visual image maps of the Earth,” stated Google spokeswoman Kate Hurowitz.

Google currently uses images from another GeoEye satellite called IKONOS and from another company caled Digital Globe.

Financial details of this partnership was undisclosed.

Related Link:
1. Reuters

About a year after Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) Mash went live, they have decided to shut down. This was made public through an e-mail that was sent to all Yahoo! Mash users. And the e-mail had a follow-up blog post by Yahoo! Community Manager Matt Warburton who confirmed the closing of the service.

The data from every user’s profile will be deleted from Yahoo! Mash except profile photos, nicknames, age, and location.

Yahoo! Mash was another social network that had features that were similar to Facebook and had Flickr RSS modules that can be moved around in drag+drop style. Yahoo! Mash was also opened up to 3rd party developers.

Yahoo! Mash also had a feature that was similar to Facebook’s News Feed called Pulse. Each member’s profile had Tags, Friends, Blog Modules, About Me, etc.

The company also shut down Yahoo 360 earlier this year. It is a big question mark whether Yahoo! will start another social network. If they do, then they should build it around Yahoo! Music, Yahoo! Photos, and Yahoo! Buzz.

Hollywood Media Corporation (NASDAQ:HOLL) announced recently that they have sold Hollywood.com and Hollywood.com’s television businesses for a price of $10 million. About $1 million was paid to Hollywood Media up front and the $9 million would be paid as an earn-out payment. The buyer of the company is R&S Investments, LLC.

R&S Investments LLC is a company owned by Mitchell Rubenstein and Laurier Silvers. Rubenstein is the current Chairman and CEO and Silvers is President of Hollywood Media.

Hollywood.com makes up about 4% of Hollywood Media’s total revenue. But Hollywood.com had a net los of $2.5 million. If Hollywood.com resells within the next 3 years, Hollywood Media will receive 5% of any sale that is above $10 million.

By selling off Hollywood.com, the company plans on focusing on their profitable online Broadway ticketing company which includes Broadway.com.

According to paidContent, Hollywood Media sold off two arms of their company in 2006 and 2007. This included Baseline/StudioSystems and Showtimes. Showtimes was sold to The New York Times Company (NYSE:NYT) for $35 million. The company is also expected to make Hollywood.com a celebrity news site.

This was a rather odd acquisition. It is rare that a couple of members on the Board of the company buys the company that they work for. Hollywood Media is based in Boca Raton, FL.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is the default search in the upper search box in the Firefox browser. This is because Google paid a good price to be there. And Google is helping Mozilla stay alive as they are Mozilla’s biggest revenue source.

“We’ve just renewed our agreement with Google for an additional three years. This agreement now ends in November of 2011 rather than November of 2008, so we have stability in income,” stated Mitchell Baker, Chairperson of the Mozilla Foundation. “We’re also learning more all the time about how to use Mozilla’s financial resources to help contributors through infrastructure, new programs, and new types of support from employees.”

Mozilla’s revenue was $52.9 million in 2005 and $66.8 million in 2006. The 2007 numbers aren’t yet known. Over those two years, it is believed that 85% of Mozilla’s revenue was generated from their partnership with Google. Now that the deal is extended to November 2011, Mozilla will continue to depend on the search engine company to keep their employees paid, run an office, and have all the server power they need.

“We are excited by the opportunity to accelerate our growth and build on our momentum,” stated Simon Tisminezky, CEO of SpeedDate.com. “We are focused on providing our users with the quickest way to meet other singles for live online dates. No other dating site allows you to log on and be matched on live dates immediately.”

SpeedDate.com is the first online video dating streaming service. SpeedDate’s users have been growing about 50% every month. SpeedDate had about 1 million online dates take place within the last several months. SpeedDate.com launched about 10 months ago.

Using SpeedDate, singles interview each other for about 3-5 minutes and determine whether to take their desires to the next level. Remember those cheesy love connection TV shows? This is nothing like that because candidates aren’t interviewed by a host. The interaction is 1-on-1, the way it should be.

SpeedDate has announced today that they have raised $6 million in Series B funding from Menlo Ventures. Menlo Ventures is a Menlo Park, Calif.-based VC company that has invested in companies like IMVU.com, Infoseek, Jobfox, Like.com, MobiTV, Eve.com, CinemaNow, Cellfire, and BigTent.com. This is the second time that Menlo has invested in SpeedDate

“SpeedDate.com has developed a revolutionary product and rapidly achieved a critical mass of users,” stated Mark Siegel, MD at Menlo Ventures. “We have been impressed with SpeedDate.com’s phenomenal growth rate and we are confident that it is well positioned to capture significant market share and expand the online dating category.”

SpeedDate also has an application that is compatible with Facebook, Bebo, meebo, and MySpace.

Related Links:
1. SpeedDate.com
2. Yahoo! Finance

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) subsidiary YouTube has enhanced their video uploading features. Now users can add closed caption files to have words synched with videos.  Closed caption files are not ordinary text files or Word documents, they require a specific software.  One example is TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio.  Camtasia Studio costs about $299.

Closed captioning is supported across 120 languages on YouTube.  Once captions are added to a video, the viewer can enable or disable the feature while watching the video.

Here are a few examples of the feature:
-BBC’s Top Gear
-CNET Crave Blog Product reviews
- MIT Physics lecture.

To add closed caption, click on the up arrow on the bottom right corner of the video and hit CC.  Below is a screen shot of a video in Spanish closed caption.

I’d actually be more impressed if YouTube allowed users to add a text file to use as closed caption rather than having to own the software or paying someone else to make the CC file for you.  If Viddler can have a feature where users can comment on specific points of a video, why can’t YouTube allow you to add your own text to the video? 

Perhaps we’ll see this feature in the near future with Google’s acquisition of Omnisio.

Related Link:
1. YouTube blog

Bloomberg L.P. has made a pretty big mistake.  Bloomberg has a 17 page document containing the life and death of Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and that document was published today.  When the obituary story was accidentally published, many Apple investors quivered about what had happened.  The story was quickly retracted after it was published.

Gawker has the whole document embedded in their blog post.

Below is the retraction statement:
Retraction:

Story Referencing Apple Was Sent in Error by Bloomberg News

Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) — An incomplete story referencing Apple
Inc. was inadvertently published by Bloomberg News at 4:27 p.m.
New York time today. The item was never meant for publication and
has been retracted.

—Editor: Joe Winski, Cesca Antonelli

Jobs has battled pancreatic cancer a couple of years ago, but stated that his life is no longer threatened by any sort of illness. 

A couple of days ago, Freakonomics published an article called What Does a Sick C.E.O. do to His Company?  The premise of the article was that if a C.E.O.’s condition changes and the company previously announced the health condition of their leader, they should keep investors updated.

I have a difference in opinion with the individual that was interviewed by Freakonomics.  Our health is our own business.  It doesn’t matter if you flip burgers at McDonald’s or if you are the leader of a multi-billion dollar corporation… What happens behind closed doors at a hospital should not be opened to the entire public.

Sify Technologies Limited (NASDAQ:SIFY) and Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) have made an official partnership to have Google power Sifymail and chat applications. Sify’s stock price increased about 18% after the news was released. Their stock on the NASDAQ is now trading at $3.12 per share and they have a market cap of $133.59 million.

Sify’s search engine is already powered by Google. This partnership further develops Sify’s alliance with the U.S.-based search engine company.

“There is a perfect confluence
of the mission of our companies in enhancing the quality of life of
individuals and businesses by empowering them with the Internet. Our
agreement with Google makes superior applications available for
communications and collaboration, coupled with our understanding of the
needs of Indians, on our popular portal Sify.com,” stated Raju Vegesna, CEO and Chairman of Sify. “We believe that we
can make compelling applications, tools and content based on Google’s
expertise for many more Indians to use the Internet to enhance their
productivity and quality of life. This agreement enhances our
relationship with Google beyond powering the search on Sify.com.”

Google Apps will be launching the Google Apps across their portal in the next few months.

Related Link:
1. Sify Finance

Cisco Systems, Inc. has made a definitive agreement to acquire PostPath. PostPath has an online mail and calendar software that serves either as a replacement or as a supplement to Microsoft Outlook.

PostPath will be used to enhance WebEx, a video conference company that Cisco acquired last year. Cisco will also use PostPath’s email and calendar systems and improve upon the IM, voice, video, data, and document experience.

“The acquisition of PostPath complements our strategy to develop an integrated collaboration platform designed for how we work today and into the future, providing real productivity gains and a more satisfying user experience”, stated Doug Dennerline, Cisco SVP of Collaboration Software Group. “Our ‘cloud-based’ delivery model offers our customers rapid deployment and compelling economics.

As part of the agreement, Cisco will pay $215 million in exchange for 100% of the shares in PostPath. The acquisition is expected to finalize by Q1 2009. PostPath’s current employees will become part of Cisco’s Collaboration Software Group.

PostPath is based in Mountain View, Calif. PostPath will continue to support existing customers.

Related Links:
1. Cisco Press release
2. PostPath Press Release
3. PostPath.com