AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Facebook Gets $60 Million Additional Investment From Hong Kong Billionaire Li Ka-Shing: Report — Paid Content

Facebook has closed another big tranche of its planned funding round, this time from an unlikely source: Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, who has made an investment of $60 million, reports Kara on AllThingsD. Ka-Shing is better known as the [...]

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An easy way to find that book –LA Times
PITTSBURGH — Nearly a decade ago, computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University embarked on a project with an astonishingly lofty goal: Digitize the published works of humankind and make them freely available online.
The architects of the project said this week they have surpassed their latest target, having [...]

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Discovery’s Got a New Manager, a New Brand and a New Ad Model - Ad Age
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The times they are a-changin’ for Discovery. It’s got a new general manager, a new name for one of its networks and new ad model.
Jane Root, president-general manager of Discovery Channel and the Science Channel, left [...]

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Social Site Rankings (October, 2007) - Tech Crunch
Last month, I asked comScore to run some numbers on traffic to social sites (comScore calls them social networking sites, but they are not all social networks). This month, I asked them to do the same run again for October, 2007. Below are the results, which show both [...]

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Yahoo! Tries To Catch Widget Wave - Forbes
In a tech era dominated by Google, Facebook and countless hyped start-ups, one way beleaguered Yahoo! plans to stay relevant is by riding the Web widget wave.
Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) has been in the desktop widget business since it acquired tiny application platform-maker Konfabulator [...]

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MTV’s Plans For Digital Gaming Expansion; All of South Park Online - paidContent.org
A nice and short video interview from Reuters, (NSDQ: RTRSY) with Mika Salmi, President, MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) Global Digital Media, on Rockband online expansion and other online gaming efforts. Also, the plans for other websites such as the standalone Dailyshow.com.
Then, much like [...]

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Apple to Unveil Faster IPhone, AT&T’s Stephenson Says - Bloomberg
AT&T CEO: Let Verizon Have Their Open Network, We’ve Got The 3G IPhone - paidContent.org

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Bernstein Media Symposium: DIS CEO Iger On Virtual Worlds, DVD Vs. Download, ABC Online Syndie, Etc.

Just finished listening to Bob Iger’s keynote at the Sanford C. Bernstein Media Symposium, closed to the press but open virtually through the magic of Reg FD. (Scratchy audio, though, and no audio at all for questions from the audience; [...]

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NBCU Pacts With Netflix On Next-Day TV Show Downloads - paidContent.org
NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) has added Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) to its roster of online syndication outlets. Netflix joins Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Unbox and the network’s own NBC Direct site for TV show downloads, and the streaming option viewers are offered on the NBC/News Corp. (NYSE: [...]

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Verizon’s Opening Move and You — Wall St Journal
Yesterday’s announcement that Verizon will at least partially open its platform has implications for developers, being discussed all over the web as I write. WSJ approached it from the view of the consumer.

Verizon Wireless’s decision to open up its network will likely mean more choices for [...]

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