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Court says Jana can nominate members to CNET's board

Jana Partners , the hedge fund trying to take control of the board of online-media company CNET Networks, publisher of News.com, on Thursday said a court ruled that the investors have a right to nominate seven directors to the company's board and to propose expansion of the board by five members.

CNET in January said the efforts of a group of activist investors led by Jana, to nominate two directors to the company's board and expand it to 13 seats, were improper under CNET's bylaws.

Jana partnered with Sandell Asset Management, Paul Gardi of Alex Interactive Media, Spark Capital , and Velocity Interactive Group to seek changes at the company.

Jana took the matter to the Delaware Court of Chancery, challenging CNET's interpretation of its bylaws. CNET said it is reviewing the court's written opinion and considering an appeal.

1 Kommentar 11.11.08 08:14, kommentieren

Hands-on: Fontifier

I am absolutely in love with Fontifier , a simple service that creates a font from your own handwriting. Fontifier isn't new-- Daily Candy covered it in 2005 and I saw it on the Craft blog --but in my opinion, good, ol' fashioned handwriting needs all the help it can get.

In about 5 minutes yesterday, I printed out Fontifier's template, scratched in my own versions of all the letters and symbols in a typical font, then scanned and uploaded the sheet. I expected that once I uploaded my alphabet, I'd have to wait a few minutes, hours, or even days to get my True Type font back. But after I paid $9 via credit card--ding!--there it was. I downloaded the file, dragged it to the Fonts folder in my Control Panel, opened Microsoft Word and started typing.

The result doesn't exactly mimic my handwriting. I don't usually write with such a thick pen and I typically keep my hand a little straighter. Typing with my font in Word, text looks nice at 18 points, but below that, my letters look a little jagged.

Still, I'm already dreaming up uses for my font--valentines! party invitations!-- and plan on creating a few more in weeks to come.

My Fontifier font only sorta kinda looks like my real handwriting.

4 Kommentare 11.11.08 06:53, kommentieren

Google Street View: The musical extravaganza

Earlier this year artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley teamed up with Google to create what might be the oddest thing caught on Street View, Google Maps ' virtual man-on-the-street service. Hewlett and Kinsley managed to get a large group of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, locals together to participate in a variety of activities on-camera, including organized jogging , a sword fight , and a parade-- complete with band instruments and uniforms . All the while Google's Street View car captured every moment.

The result is a few square blocks of the zaniness that will be forever preserved for others to see--that is, until Google updates the imagery with newer shots. Hewlett and Kinsley have documented the entire project on their site, along with a "making of" documentary that captures the scope of how many people were involved:

What will remain far more interesting to most are all the unintentionally peculiar things caught in Street View's cameras , which continued to be chronicled by eagle-eyed individuals. On that front, worth checking out is StreetViewGallery , which has a Reddit -like system for promoting funny found Street View shots to the top.

1 Kommentar 11.11.08 05:32, kommentieren

Martin Buckley quits Novell over 'certain principles' (UPDATE)

Martin Buckley

Wow. Martin Buckley, longtime product manager and global evangelist for Novell's Systems and Resource Management products , has quit Novell.

He hasn't given any real details as to why but says he's leaving over "certain principles."

Word on the street is that Buckley was set to do a lot of stuff at Novell's upcoming Brainshare user and partner conference. His departure may be a harbinger of really big changes in Novell's systems and resource management business unit.

Positive changes? Well, apparently not, from Martin's perspective. You don't quit a company after eight and a half years over "certain principles," unless things are really bad.

I never knew Buckley during my time at Novell, but he was and is well-respected . His departure doesn't inspire confidence.

UPDATE: Heard from a credible source that Martin is on his way to Microsoft. I guess the "certain principles" weren't things like "open source purity" and such. Maybe Martin wasn't happy that Novell hasn't fully sold itself to Microsoft. :-)

1 Kommentar 11.11.08 04:11, kommentieren

World's smallest satellite phone

Satellite phones have traditionally been big, bulky monsters that look more like bricks than actual phones. But just like their cellular phone cousins, satellite phones are also getting smaller.

On Thursday Globalstar debuted the world's smallest, lightest handset for use on a global satellite network. The new GSP-1700 mobile satellite telephone, which operates on the Globalstar satellite network in more than 120 countries and six continents around the world, is nearly half the weight of the company's current satellite handsets weighing in at approximately 7.1 ounces or 203 grams. And it's close to 45 percent smaller than Globalstar's other satellite phones. The lithium-ion battery is designed to provide users with four hours of talk time and 36 hours of standby time. The GSP-1700 is being manufactured by Qualcomm.

This item originally appeared on CNET's new gadgets blog, Crave , which covers the hottest and coolest gizmos around. Other recent postings include Ian Walton's "glo" pillow alarm clock and Steve McQueen's motorcycles .

1 Kommentar 11.11.08 02:50, kommentieren

Microsoft demos in-game advertising

Microsoft showed off its Massive advertising platform in Times Square in New York on Tuesday.

The tech giant wanted to show the advertising world, which is gathered in New York for the annual Advertising Week conference, exactly how the dynamic in-game advertisements work.

Flashing high above 43rd Street were clips from a series of games that showed avatars stopping to view a movie trailer for the Hollywood blockbuster 300 . A Toyota advertisement also lined the outfield wall in a baseball game that's played on Microsoft's Xbox game console.

"The idea is to have advertisements appear and fit in naturally to the games just as they would in real life," said Jay Sampson, vice president of North American and Asia Pacific sales for Massive, Microsoft's in-game advertising marketplace. "But these advertisements are also dynamic. So the ads can be updated or changed by the advertiser at any time."

Microsoft, which bought Massive in May 2006 , is a leader in placing dynamic advertising in games. The market is filled with many smaller players, such as a company called Double Fusion . But it's also attracting other big technology names, including Google, which bought AdScape Media for $23 million earlier this year .

Analysts say the in-game advertising market is worth about $514 million today. And dynamic in-game dynamic advertising, which allows advertisers to change the advertisements at will, is expected to reach $675 million by 2012 in the United States, according to consumer research group Parks Associates.

Microsoft sees its early lead in the in-game advertising market as a strategic opportunity that fits well into the company's overall advertising strategy.

"Emerging media, like in-game advertising, is a huge component of our overall strategy," said Matthew Carr, senior director of Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions. "We're already in a leadership position here. And we see this as being where the future growth will be."

1 Kommentar 11.11.08 01:29, kommentieren

NebuAd grilled over hot coals in Congress on privacy

NebuAd has made few friends, thanks to a business built on monitoring broadband customers' Web surfing to deliver advertisements. It certainly found none on Capitol Hill on Thursday.

The Redwood City, Calif.-based start-up was forced on the defensive during a hearing in which politicians charged that deep packet inspection of Internet traffic was far too privacy-invasive. Only if customers gave affirmative consent by opting in, they said, might the practice be acceptable.

Texas Rep. Gene Green called NebuAd's opt-out procedures "contemptible." To Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Doyle, the practice "goes against everything the country's been founded on." Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak wondered: "Why do I have to opt out? Why should the burden be on the American consumer?"

Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, suggested the business model was, without opt-in, flatly illegal. "We need to have remedial legal courses for some corporate general counsels," Markey said.

This was hardly a pleasant experience for NebuAd CEO Robert Dykes--who has already seen paying customers including Charter Communications pull the plug on his company's deep packet inspection service in response to pressure from politicians. Markey and his Republican counterpart, for instance, complained to Charter about NebuAd two months ago.

Dykes first claimed he was misunderstood. "I feel like Galileo when he was viewed with skepticism on demonstrating that the Earth revolved around the sun," Dykes said. "The science exists today and NebuAd is using it to create truly anonymous profiles that cannot be hacked or reverse-engineered."

But, under questioning from Markey, Dykes refused to answer whether he thought an opt-in standard should be applied. "I really must protest...I think you're forcing me into a 'Have you stopped beating your wife recently?'," he said.

The U.S. Congress, of course, has no direct role in regulating whether or not Charter and other broadband companies including CenturyTel, Wide Open West, and Embarq sign up with NebuAd or not. But as I wrote in an article on a Senate antitrust hearing this week, research has confirmed what common sense suggests: Congress sets the budget for federal agencies, and a congressional hearing makes them significantly more likely to bring lawsuits or other enforcement actions. And politicians can always rewrite the laws to explicitly outlaw NebuAd's business model.

NebuAd's potential legal problem is that what it's doing--intercepting a broadband customer's communications and determining what kind of ads may be relevant to display--looks a lot like wiretapping under existing law. And a wealth of complex and arcane state and federal laws specify when wiretapping is and is not legal, practically inviting federal regulators or state attorneys general to take action.

We published a detailed analysis two months ago, but the summary is that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 ; the Communications Act of 1934; and the Cable TV Privacy Act of 1984 all may apply. Cable providers may need to obtain affirmative opt-in consent from customers, putting them at a competitive disadvantage to, say, AT&T and Verizon. The Center for Democracy and Technology's subsequent analysis published on July 8 reviews state laws as well.

For its part, NebuAd has posted a legal memo designed to defuse those criticisms. It argues that the 1986 changes to wiretap law have not been clarified by courts, and that the Cable Act may not apply to "any record of aggregate data which does not identify particular persons."

1 Kommentar 11.11.08 00:08, kommentieren

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