Amazon.com has bought Lexcycle, the parent company of Stanza.  Stanza is an iPhone application and desktop software that lets users download and read e-books in different formats.  Stanza works with PDFs, EPUB, XML, and eBook content protection technology used by Adobe.  This interets Amazon.com because users can export ebooks to the Kindle.

Stanza has been used by over 1.3 million users across 60 countries.  “We are not planning any changes in the Stanza application or user experience as a result of the acquisition,” stated the website of Stanza.  “Customers will still be able to browse, buy, and read ebooks from our many content partners. We look forward to offering future products and services that we hope will resonate with our passionate readers.”

[via PCW]

Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis founded Joost after the success they had with Skype and Kazaa.  Joost is not exactly a success story despite all of the funding the company has raised.  From Sequoia Capital itself, Joost raised $45 million.  Now the company is in talks for an acquisition.

Time Warner is in talks with the company according to a source with the Associated Press.  Time Warner wants to buy Joost at a low price which is bad for Sequoia.  Supposedly Comcast has already turned down buying Joost beause they already own a competing service called Fancast.  Viacom and CBS both have also invested a considerable amount in Joost which makes a potential acquisition from a competing network even more interesting.

Joost initially started as a P2P high-quality video streaming software, but YouTube came out of nowhere back then and people lost interest in the service.  Joost has switched to a web version since then.  More as the story develops.

Wired.com is reporting that an acquisition of Seeqpod is expected to take place very soon by a major new media company.  This news arrives about one month after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  Even though Franks did not reveal who the buyer is, he stated that the company is large enough to persuade major labels to stop suing Seeqpod and embrace it instead.  Seeqpod is currently in the final stages of acquisition talk.  The company scours the Internet to find MP3s being hosted and streams it to the public.  Once the acquisition takes place, the company will use Seeqpod’s technology to find videos made of Flash and other file types.

[via Wired]

File hosting service RapidShare.com has reportedly handed over the IP address information to the recording industry.  Record labels have been taking advantage of the 101st paragraph of German copyright law which forces ISPs to identify content owners on file hosting systems if they are suspected of infringing.

One user claimed that his house was raided by law enforcement officials in Germany thanks to RapidShare.  The user was sharing Metallica’s Death Magnetic album one day before it was released.  In January 2008, RapidShare and the GEMA argued that the website was not responsible for copyright content being hosted.  The courts decided to rule against RapidShare and forced them to remove content proactively.

[via Ars Technica]

[Drebin]
About six months ago, Apple hired Mark Papermaster as the role of the Senior VP of Devices Hardware Engineering. Papermaster’s former employer IBM filed a lawsuit against him for violating a noncompete agreement. THe outcome was that Papermaster would be able to join Apple under the terms that he would have to wait to join the company. Papermaster’s first day was this past Friday and he reports directly to Steve Jobs.

Recently the iPod/iPhone company hired Bob Drebin, a former graphics engineer at AMD. Drebin worked in a similar position at ATI Technologies before that. Drebin is now a Senior Director at Apple and he was responsible for the graphics chip being used in the Nintendo GameCube today. Drebin worked at Pixar in the Computer R&D division for 4 years back in the mid to late 1980′s. He was part of the spin-off from Lucasfilm.

[via CNET]

Swiss insurance company Nationale Suisse has fired an employee for surfing on Facebook while she was taking a sick day.  The woman said that she could not come to work because she had to lie in the dark rather than sitting in front of a computer.  Nationale Suisse reported that they lost trust in the employee.

“This abuse of trust, rather than the activity on Facebook, led to the ending of the work contract,” wrote the company in a statement.  The woman said she was surfing Facebook from her iPhone and wrote that her employer was spying on her and several other employees.  They were able to do so through a mysterious friend request which gives access to employee activities.  Nationale Suisse denied the spying accusation and said that they obtained the information from one of the woman’s colleagues.

This is the second time I’ve heard of an employee getting fired because of their use of Facebook.  Anglo Irish Bank fired intern Kevin Colvin for taking a “family emergency” day off to dress like a fairy at a Halloween party.

Yesterday night, it was announed that Facebook would be opening up a new set of APIs to build an ecosystem of applications around profiles and the user homepage.  Xobni, the plugin made around Microsoft Outlook is one of the first companies to jump on board with the new set of APIs.  In the sidebar of Mirosoft Outlook, Xobni will display links, pictures, status messages, contact info, and current position listed on LinkedIn.

Xobni will also show recent wall posts made of the contact’s Facebook profile and will give you the option to comment or “Like” the data listed.  Xobni users won’t have to upgrade software because all the changes run from the servers.  Xobni is only available on Windows machines so Mac users won’t have the benefit of the new application.

Xobni is based in San Francisco and expects to have the new application launched by around 6PM Pacific Time.  Xobni has over $14 million in funding and started out as a Y-Combinator company.

Amy Trachtman heard a jet plane fly very close to her apartment this morning.  As soon as she heard it she tweeted that she “just had a mile heart attack from a jet plane grazing the apartment…”  According to NiemanLab.org, she was most likely the first person to report the planes publicly.  The planes caused a stir around New York City as many buildings were evacuated.

“I happened to just be sitting in my apartment on the computer, checking emails and whatnot and trying to read Twitter updates,” stated Trachtman in an interview. “I guess that’s why I was so fast.”

Trachtman noticed the evacuations taking place and asked her friend in Manhattan to tune in to the radios, news on TV, and check the Internet to see if anything was happening.  At 10:06AM, there was a thread started on JC List, a website forum comprised of Jersey City residents.  By 10:12AM, the JC List reported that the plane was involved a running test by the military.

“We’re hearing reports of low-flying planes over lower Hudson, visible from Staten Island, Hoboken. See anything?” wrote Patrick LaForge, a well known Twitter user.  The DJIA took a little bit of a dip as a result of the news.  The Wall Street Journal wrote a blog post regarding the incidence before the New York Times.

Mayor Bloomberg said he was not happy by the fact that he was not notified about the low-flying jet being authorized from The White House.

“Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision,” stated White House Military Office director Louis Caldera. “While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, its clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused.”