iHollywood News

In Brief: Tiny New iPod Shuffle

On Friday, Apple will begin to ship its new iPod shuffle, which will be half the size of the already miniscule original.

It will sell for $79 and come with 1GB of flash memory, along with a belt clip.

--Benjamin Nugent

In Brief: Japan Will Get Amp'd

Verizon's MVNO Amp'd Mobile will sell its content to the Japanese carrier KDDI.

Japanese "Amp'd Live" service will offer clips from American movies, clips from sports broadcasts, and music videos. Amp'd produces some original programming, but most of its content is licensed from other entertainment companies.

Amp'd has a similar deal in Canada, with the carrier Telus, a company so Canadian its corporate slogan is "the future is friendly."

--Benjamin Nugent

Diller and Turner Headed for Internet Comedy Duel

TBS announced today it will launch its broadband comedy network in January.

Called Super Deluxe, the site will feature comedy videos aimed at young people. Ads aimed at said young people will provide revenue.

Meanwhile, in an interview today in The New York Times, Michael Jackson, President of Programming at Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp, discussed IAC's own web comedy project: an up-to-the-minute news satire site.

IAC's site will be a joint venture with The Huffington Post blogs, and, like TBS's Super Deluxe, is scheduled to launch next year.

Will the Diller site and the Turner site compete mainly against each other, just like traditional TV shows on different networks, or will their main rivals be the user-generated content on YouTube and GoFish?

Probably the former. The amount of terrible "funny" videos on the web is so great that even young males committed to spending as much time as possible scouring the Internet for comedy gold will want reliably high-quality sources of content.

--Benjamin Nugent

In Brief: GoFish User-Generated-Video Service Goes Public

GoFish, a user-generated-video site, announced today it will go public. $12 million in common stock and warrants is held by private and institutional investors.

GoFish claims 2.5 million unique users each month. In addition to connecting users to each other's videos, it offers its own commercial programming, such as a reality show called "America's Dream Date."

--Benjamin Nugent

In Brief: Vonage Narrows Losses, But Can't Stop Bleeding Customers

Vonage reported a narrower loss in its third quarter this year than from the same quarter last year, but also reporting an increase in the percentage of customers who leave the service each month.

Revenue was way up from last year's third quarter, jumping from $73.9 million to $160.7 million.

The Internet phone service provider said it's been pouring money into customer service, previously a problem area.

Vonage stock stands at 6.88.

--Benjamin Nugent

TalkPlus Raises $5.5 Million, Will Offer Multiple Numbers on One Cell Phone

TalkPlus has secured $5.5 million from the venture capital firm Menlo Ventures. The company plans to launch a service in two weeks called TalkPlus Number, which will allow consumers to have two cell phone numbers on a single cell phone.

This will be the beta version of the product; in early 2007, users will be able to use an assortment of numbers for a single phone.

The idea behind TalkPlus is that if you're single you'll be able to give out one number to potential dates you meet on line while retaining a more exclusive number for friends; if you're a lawyer or an agent you'll give one number to your most valued clients and another to the rest; if you're a working parent you can give one number to your co-workers and one number to your kids.

Pierre Nguyen, a Morgan Stanley analyst, told us he wasn't sure a TalkPlus number would be different enough from Skype mobile service to compete for users. "Skype has 20 million users, and Skype Mobile can be installed on most handsets," he said. "And on top of that, with Skype you can create as many numbers as you want."

TalkPlus CEO Jeff Black told iHollywood told us today that TalkPlus will work perfectly where Skype will barely function.

"In seven countries, including China and India,it's illegal to run encrypted voices on a data channel," he said. That would lock Skype Mobile out of those markets.

"Ninety-eight percent of the other carriers in the world, including in the US, have introduced little black boxes that look for Skype traffic and introduce jitter into the line if you're using Skype to make your conversations suck, because they don't want you to use the data network."

Unlike Skype Mobile, TalkPlus will run on cellular networks, he said, but it will allow you to talk to a Skype user.

One thing is for sure: there will be major TalkPlus drama here in Los Angeles. Imagine the torment of learning the number you have for your manager is his second-tier, everyday number. You get his TalkPlus number from your friend, another one of his clients, and find it won't let you through.

You can already envision the episode of "Entourage" that will build from this premise.

Another LA-friendly aspect of TalkPlus service: it facilitates both privacy and deception.   

"Let's say Paris Hilton's phone gets hacked, and now everybody has Paris Hilton's number," Black explains. "But let's say Paris has a VIP number, and if anyone calls that number besides the people she's given it too they get an out-of-service message."

If you want to play hooky from work, TalkPlus will enable you to use an "alias number," which will make your home number come up on caller ID when you call in sick, even though you're actually calling from your cell phone. 

You'll also be able to represent your phone call as coming from your company, not just a number--the name of your law firm can come up on somebody's caller ID when you place a call from your cell.

A niche product? Even if it is, with analysts predicting sales of 1.1 billion mobile handsets worldwide in 2007, a small fraction of mobile phone customers is a big market.

--Benjamin Nugent

MySpace Filters Out Illicit Music Streams

MySpace extended an olive branch to music labels today, announcing it will use the audio ID service Gracenote to filter out users' unauthorized streams of copyrighted music.

The new policy is likely intended to mollify aggrieved music industry executives  like Universal Music Group Chairman Doug Morris, who said at a conference in September, "We believe these new businesses [like MySpace] are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars."

Many MySpace users stream songs on their pages. The new filtering policy extends to the copyright-protected material of popular and unsigned artists alike.

Rupert Murdoch, MySpace's owner, surely risks PR disaster. Up to now he's largely left the vast online community alone; this move will alter the MySpace experience and anger users.

--Benjamin Nugent

In Brief: TicketMaster Boosts InterActiveCorp

Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp announced increased revenue and profits for the third quarter, largely stemming from strong performance in its TicketMaster division.

Along with the good news, IAC announced that Ask.com and  Lending Tree are still  in the red.

IAC's stock price stands at 30.64.

--Benjamin Nugent

Google Buys Wiki-Makers JotSpot

Google announced today that it's acquired JotSpot, a California start-up that helps users create Wikis, collaborative online discussions like the definitions that appear on Wikipedia.

JotSpot chief Joe Kraus made a statement on Google's blog was practically a valentine: "Google shared our vision for how groups of people can create, manage and share information online. Then when we had conversations with people at Google we found ourselves completing each other's sentences."

Awww....

Wikis generally look like written pages; JotSpot's innovation is to help users create Wikis in new formats, such as photo albums and spreadsheets. Kraus co-founded the company with Graham Spencer. The two of them were also co-founders of Excite.com.

--Benjamin Nugent

YouTube's Letter to Users on Comedy Central Content

This is the letter that YouTube wrote to users who had Comedy Central material on the site late last week.  (See previous post).

YouTube

Dear Member:

This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Comedy Central claiming that this material is infringing:

Daily Show Interview with Al Franken: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsbXsm56_yo

Please Note: Repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to avoid future strikes against your account, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about YouTube's copyright policy, please read the Copyright Tips guide.

If you elect to send us a counter notice, to be effective it must be a written communication provided to our designated agent that includes substantially the following (please consult your legal counsel or see 17 U.S.C . Section 512(g)(3) to confirm these requirements):

(A) A physical or electronic signature of the subscriber.

(B) Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access to it was disabled.

(C) A statement under penalty of perjury that the subscriber has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.

(D) The subscriber's name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that the subscriber consents to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which the address is located, or if the subscriberis address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which the service provider may be found, and that the subscriber will accept service of process from the person who provided notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person.

Such written notice should be sent to our designated agent as follows:

DMCA Complaints
YouTube, Inc.
1000 Cherry Ave.
Second Floor
San Bruno, CA 94066
Email: copyright@youtube.com

Please note that under Section 512(f) of the Copyright Act, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification may be subject to liability.

Sincerely,
YouTube, Inc.

Copyright © 2006 YouTube, Inc.