Microsoft loses U.S. Supreme Court case on patent | Reuters (Build 20110413222027) iCloud Allows For Apps That Apple Removed From The AppStore to be re-downloaded - CDFXapps::Figure It Out (Build 20110413222027) Steve Case and Jerry Levin reunite to accelerate health technology — Tech News and Analysis (Build 20110413222027) Former AOL CEO Steve Case and former Time Warner CEO Jerry Levin, who together presided over one of the worst mergers in corporate history, are reuniting again to help spur innovation in health and wellness. Levin, a board director with health information start-up OrganizedWisdom is launching a new strategic initiative called StartUp Health designed to help health entrepreneurs access funding, resources and education. StartUp Health is also partnering with Startup America Partnership, a White House initiative chaired by Case to boost innovation and entrepreneurship in the U.S.
Accelerating health entrepreneurs While the headline is attention-grabbing, the move is more about the larger goal of stimulating health entrepreneurship, something Levin has been learning first hand after joining OrganizedWisdom, a startup which gathers health information from medical professionals. Public-private partnership OrganizedWisdom CEO Krein said the time is ripe for innovation in health care. There’s a perfect ad for everyone (Build 20110413222027) It’s been an exciting year in the display advertising business—the movement of media online and the emergence of new technologies are causing incredible growth, and we’re investing significantly to help improve display advertising for publishers, advertisers and users. But I believe we’re poised to make even greater advances in the years ahead. We’re at the beginning of a user-focused revolution, where people connect and respond to display ads in ways we’ve never seen before. This was the subject of a keynote I gave this morning at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Innovation Days @ Internet Week entitled “There’s a perfect ad for everyone.”
You can view the recording at google.com/watchthisspace. In the speech, I made six predictions about how display advertising will change for the better by 2015: The number of display ad impressions will decrease by 25 percent per person. Google Acquires AdMeld For $400 Million (Build 20110413222027) Google Will Keep Washington Regulators Busy With $400 Million AdMeld Deal – AllThingsD (Build 20110413222027) Google’s full employment program for anti-trust regulators continues: The search giant is in the final stages of a deal to purchase ad tech company AdMeld.
Like other recent Google purchases, this deal will automatically generate scrutiny from Washington before it can formally close. That’s both because of the size of the deal — around $400 million — and because the purchase deals with a sector that Google already dominates — display ad sales. AdMeld is one of a handful of big ad optimization platforms that work on behalf of publishers by trying to get the best prices for their inventory from a variety of ad networks. That kind of work is one of the few parts of the ad tech ecosystem where Google didn’t already have a presence, so a deal for AdMeld or one of its peers always seemed inevitable. Google declined to comment; AdMeld CEO Michael Barrett hasn’t responded to requests for comment. Will Washington sign off on this one? TechCrunch first reported news of the Google AdMeld deal. New Russian A.T.M.’s Are Built to Detect Lies - NYTimes.com (Build 20110413222027) Consumers with no previous relationship with the bank could talk to the machine to apply for a credit card, with no human intervention required on the bank’s end.
The machine scans a passport, records fingerprints and takes a three-dimensional scan for facial recognition. And it uses voice-analysis software to help assess whether the person is truthfully answering questions that include “Are you employed?” And “At this moment, do you have any other outstanding loans?” The voice-analysis system was developed by the Speech Technology Center, a company whose other big clients include the Federal Security Service — the Russian domestic intelligence agency descended from the Soviet K.G.B. Dmitri V. The big bank involved, Sberbank, whose majority owner is the Russian government, said it intended to install the new machines in malls and bank branches around the country eventually, but had not yet scheduled the rollout. The lab bristles with biometric surveillance technology. Cellphone Carriers Face Pressure Over Texting - WSJ.com (Build 20110413222027) Apple Reverses Course On In-App Subscriptions [Apple Confirms] - Mac Rumors (Build 20110413222027)
Apple has quietly changed its guidelines on the pricing of In-App Subscriptions on the App Store. There are no longer any requirements that a subscription be the "same price or less than it is offered outside the app". There are no longer any guidelines about price at all. Apple also removed the requirement that external subscriptions must be also offered as an in-app purchase.
UPDATE 12:15 PDT: An Apple spokesperson confirmed to Dow Jones Newswire that the company had, in fact, revised its policies regarding In-App Subscriptions. Content providers may offer In-App subscriptions at whatever price they wish and they are not required to offer an in-app subscription simply because they sell a subscription outside the App Store as well.
This past February, Apple introduced App Store Subscriptions. This opened the door to a wide range of in-app subscription services such as magazines and newspapers. Thanks to Armin for the tip, and to Heise Online's Mac & i blog. Great news: Promoted Trends on Twitter now cost only $120,000 per day! | ZDNet (Build 20110413222027) Achievement unlocked. You know, I remember a time when Twitter was trying hard to find itself a monetization model. Ads were apparently out of the question, celebrities were cashing in with sponsored tweets, and spammers... well, spammers will be spammers no matter what the platform. Then, in a stroke of genius, Twitter decided to make money by having companies bid or pay for various promotional facets, like "Promoted Trends. " In a revealing article posted on ClickZ on June 7th, Twitter director of revenue Adam Bain (not the guy pictured in the upper right-hand corner of this article) details a great deal of Twitter's current monetization model.
To quote: Big dollars come in from brands like Toyota, HBO and Samsung - all of which have run a Promoted Trend recently; however, Twitter aims to bring in smaller and mid-market brands through its inside sales team as well. Yes, you read that correctly. Bain suggested Twitter provides advertisers with higher engagement levels than Facebook. SOFA - Facebook Acquires Sofa (Build 20110413222027)