Nicholas Carlson

UPDATED: Perhaps feeling a little left out of the lucrative social-networking space, Microsoft announced a joint venture with Wallop to get in the game. The start-up is the fruit of Microsoft’s IP Ventures program, which the company uses to connect its R&D department to the venture capitalist (VC) community. Microsoft will own a minority stake […]

Score one for the big guys. After watching Microsoft, Research in Motion (RIM), and eBay lose millions to smaller companies in settlements over patent lawsuits, RealNetworks was happy to announce a patent on its “Click-to-Stream” technology. The company said the patent covers the method Real uses to synchronize audio or video with meta data when […]

Following Jeeves the butler out the door, Ask.com CEO Steve Berkowitz is headed to Microsoft. Berkowitz will be in charge of MSN.com, MSNTV and MSN Internet Access programming, as well as advertising sales, business development, and marketing for Live Platforms, MSN and Windows Live, according to Microsoft spokesperson Jim Desler. Experts call the hiring a […]

Streaming video and music accessed through the Internet and mobile devices will generate $27 billion in revenue by 2011, according to an Insight Research report. In what Insight president Robert Rosenberg calls a conservative prediction, the report also projects 32 percent annual compound growth for the streaming media market. The fulfillment of those predictions depends […]

Internet advertising revenues grew 30 percent, earning $12.5 billion in 2005, according to numbers released today by Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. That growth and shifts within the sector reflect how advertisers are rethinking their approach to marketing. Leaping gains in Referrals/Lead Generation and E-mail ads combined with yet more spending on keyword advertising particularly […]

AOL today told internetnews.com that it is building a social-networking site likely to compete with News Corp.’s MySpace.com. “We have something that we’re working on,” AOL spokesperson Anne Bentley told internetnews.com. Several AOL employees have left comments on various blogs echoing confirmations. Social-networking sites only recently exploded into business relevancy. Many started paying attention when […]

After talk of a $750 million buyout offer, Facebook today settled instead for a mere $25 million investment from venture-capital firm Greylock Partners. The companies announced today Facebook’s third round of funding. The $25 million is nowhere near Facebook’s rumored $2 billion price tag, but spokeswoman Melanie Dietch said Facebook did not plan to sell […]

Even stateside, court rulings aren’t going Microsoft’s way. In the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts today, Judge D.J. Wolf granted Novell’s motion to quash Microsoft’s subpoena for information that Novell gave the European Commission (EC) in its antitrust case, according to documents obtained by internetnews.com. In March 2004, the EC ruled that Microsoft abused its […]

Burst.com answered Apple Computer in court yesterday, counter-suing the company over alleged patent infringements. Burst.com CEO Richard Lang said the success of Apple’s popular iTunes, iPod and QuickTime products depend on the customer’s ability to download a movie or a song in less time than it would take to play that video or song. The […]

Mobile phones have screens, speakers and microphones. They can take pictures and record video. And they can connect to the Internet. So why you can’t make a video-conference call from your mobile phone? For the same reason on-demand video doesn’t really work on mobile devices. And for the same reason you can only watch eight […]

The Department of Justice (DoJ) filed a “John Doe” summons to eBay subsidiary PayPal, asking it to turn over account data. In seeking the summons, which the agency filed on Feb. 24, the DoJ is attempting to show that there is a reasonable basis for believing that the information it wants will help identify U.S. […]

Newspapers are doomed. Or so it may seem. The young, the hip and the Web-savvy are going online for their classifieds, and ad dollars are following. So if classified ad revenue, old media’s mainstay tributary, is drying up, one question remains: With what will we line the birdcages of the future? At least, so goes […]