Aktuelles 1. März 2012

Lesenswerte Analysen, Hintergrundberichte und interessante News:

• Did Universal Music Try To Expense The Costs Of Eminem’s Producers Suing Over Unpaid Royalties… Back To Eminem’s Producers? | Techdirt "As you can see, the audit shows $3.8 million owed for the missing royalties from iTunes downloads. But also of interest? FBT claims that it never received a cut of the YouTube settlement money — which many people had been wondering if it was ever going to go to the artists. Apparently not.

  However, the most insane thing here may be the line at the bottom, in which it appears that Universal held back $2 million in a "legal hold." Gardner notes that this is money held back to pay for this very lawsuit. This is classic record label economics. Everything that you do that costs money, they charge against the artists' royalties. Order pizza at the recording studio? They charge that against your (small) cut of the royalties. Want to do extra promotions? Charge it against the royalties.

  And… apparently, sue Universal music for withholding millions in royalties? It looks like they'll charge that against your royalties too…"

• → TV Is Broken "Of course, not more than ten minutes later, the movie is once again interrupted by a round of commercials. “Why did they stop the movie again?” Beatrix, asks. Thus leading to essentially the same conversation as before. She just does not understand why one would want to watch anything this way. It’s boring and frustrating. She makes it through the end of the movie but has little interest in watching more. She’d rather play. The television is never turned on again during our stay." (via Marco Arment)
• The ebook evolution "The X axis is time, the Y axis is percent penetration of U.S. households. The squiggly blue line all the way to the left is the telephone. The two red lines in the middle are television and color television. You can see in the case of almost every technology, a slow ramp up, followed by explosive growth leading to almost total penetration. When utility surpasses earlier technologies and when production capacity increases and cost decreases to a sufficient point, the line curves up."
• heise online | Pirate Bay nutzt nur noch Magnet-Links "Pirate Bay begründet den Schritt damit, dass die Magnet-Links im Vergleich zu den Torrent-Dateien Speicherplatz sparten und schnellere Downloads erlaubten. Magnet-Links bestehen nur aus einer Hash-Datei und brauchen daher keine Tracker, da sich zusammengehörige Dateien über Hash-Tabellen selbstständig finden."
• Meedia: Xing steigert 2011 Umsatz und Gewinn "Kräftiges Umsatz- und Ergebnisplus bei Karriere-Netzwerk Xing: Nach vorläufigen Berechnungen für das Geschäftsjahr 2011 ist das Unternehmen nach eigenen Angaben in allen Erlösquellen gewachsen. Insgesamt stieg der Umsatz um 22 Prozent auf 66,2 Mio. € gegenüber dem Vorjahr (2010: 54,3 Mio. €). Das operative Ergebnis EBITDA verbesserte sich um 33 Prozent gegenüber dem Vorjahreswert von 16,7 Mio. € auf 22,2 Mio. €. Dies teilte Xing am Dienstag in Hamburg mit."
• Google once considered issuing currency | ITworld "The idea was to implement a "peer-to-peer money" system. However, Google discovered that the concept is illegal in most areas, he said. Governments are typically wary of the potential for money laundering with such proposals. "Ultimately we decided we didn't want to get into that because of these issues," Schmidt said."
• Enterprise Social Networking Platform Yammer Raises $85M From DFJ Growth, Khosla, And Others | TechCrunch
• Windows 8: a closer look at Xbox Live, Music and Videos (pictures and video) | The Verge "The most interesting part of Microsoft's Xbox work on Windows 8 is undoubtedly its Xbox Live Companion application. The companion lets you launch Xbox 360 console games from a Windows 8 PC and also includes a feature that can stream video to an Xbox 360. There doesn't appear to be a way to stream audio just yet, but Microsoft is clearly starting to position Windows 8 and Xbox as a way to compete against Apple's AirPlay feature."
• Facebook launches mobile ads: Sponsored Stories and Premium page post ads within News Feed "At today’s fMC event in New York City, Facebook announced that Sponsored Stories and Premium ads will begin to appear in News Feed on m.facebook.com and native iOS and Android apps. This marks the first time the company has brought ads into its mobile products and is part of a significant update to its marketing and advertising products, centered around the introduction of Timeline for businesses."
• Sucht Streaming-Anbieter MOG einen Käufer?
• Apple entwickelt neues Audio-Format für ‘adaptive streaming’
• heise online | heise online startet Site "Hardware Hacks" "Für alle, die ihre Spielekonsole lieber aufschrauben, als nur damit vor der Glotze herumzudaddeln, startet der neue heise-online-Channel Hardware Hacks. Er sammelt solche Projekte, berichtet über die Szene, aus der sie entstehen und gibt praktische Anleitungen für alle Könnensstufen, vom Löt-Einsteiger bis zum FPGA-Profi."

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