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DIGITAL MEDIA WIRE -- August 7, 2000
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o Barnesandnoble.com and Microsoft Launch Digital Book Service
o Pushing Into Entertainment, Altavista Partners With Redband
o Uproar Acquires Betting Site ibetcha.com For $8 Million
o Axient To Provide Streaming Media Service For NBCOlympics.com
o Excite@Home and Media 100 Launch Home Video Editing Service
o Round Table Formed To Develop Online Metrics
o Political Sites Debuting During Conventions
o Briefly Noted: Elektra.com, Portals - Record Labels, Exotec,
Hollywood.com - DoubleClick, eUniverse, iPipe, CDNOW
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o Barnesandnoble.com and Microsoft Launch Digital Book Service
New York -- In a major move in the digital book market, Barnesandnoble.com
and Microsoft launched a new digital book service on Monday. The service,
called the "eBook Store," is on Barnesandnoble.com, and includes hundreds
of book that can be downloaded for a fee. The books -- which range from
Angela's Ashes to David Copperfield -- can either be read on a computer or
printed out. Under the partnership, Microsoft is providing
Barnesandnoble.com with its eBook software, which allows books to be read
on a computer. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Barnesandnoble.com's stock closed up 38% on Monday after the announcement
of the new service, which is expected to formally launch on Tuesday.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ebook/
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o Pushing Into Entertainment, Altavista Partners With Redband
Palo Alto, Calif. -- Altavista, which has recently made a major push into
online entertainment, announced today a partnership with Redband, an
entertainment content provider. Altavista's new Entertainment Center
offers downloadable music, videos and other entertainment offerings. San
Francisco-based Redband, which is funded by Sony Music and is a spin-off
of LooksSmart, launched its service in May. It will provide Altavista with
news, talk and entertainment programming. In recent weeks, Altavista has
announced a number of partnerships with digital media companies, including
ICast, which will provide editorial content, and Listen.com, which will
provide music downloading capabilities for Altavista.
http://entertainment.altavista.com/
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/000807/ca_redband.html
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o Uproar Acquires Betting Site ibetcha.com For $8 Million
New York -- Uproar, Inc., a game web site, announced today that it will
acquire ibetcha.com for about $8 million in stock. Under the terms of the
deal, New York-based Uproar, which has seen its stock price plummet since
going public in the spring, will acquire New York-based ibetcha.com, a web
site that offers users the ability to place bets, for 1.33 million shares.
The deal is expected to close later this month. Last week, Uproar
announced that it would acquire iwin.com, an Internet lottery web site.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000807/ny_uproar_.html
http://www.uproar.com
http://www.ibetcha.com
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o Axient To Provide Streaming Media Service For NBCOlympics.com
Phoenix, Az. -- NBCOlympics.com, today announced that Axient
Communications, Inc., a Phoenix-based Internet service provider, will
provide streaming media service of the Olympic games to residential
broadband users. Under the deal, Axient will provide up to 20 minutes of
streaming audio and video each day on NBCOlympics.com. Since NBC is the
exclusive U.S. broadcaster for the Olympic games, streaming media
highlights of the games will only be available on NBCOlympics.com.
http://www.NBCOlympics.com
http://www.axient.com
_____________________________________________
o Excite@Home and Media 100 Launch Home Video Editing Service
Redwood City, Calif. -- Excite@Home, a broadband company, and
Massachusetts-based Media 100, a provider of software for streaming media
on the Internet, today launched a new video broadband application for
Excite@Home users. The free application, called IntroDV MovieMate, allows
users to edit and show their own Internet videos online.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000807/ma_media_1.html
http://www.moviemate.excite.com
http://www.media100.com
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o Round Table Formed To Develop Online Metrics
Mountain View, Calif. -- A number of leading Internet media companies have
formed a new group, called the Radiate Internet Roundtable, that will meet
on an ongoing basis to provide policy recommendations on audience
measurement, Internet privacy and online consumer issues. Companies joing
the round table, which is organized by Radiate, include AltaVista,
Arbitron, MediaMetrix, Nielson Media Research, OgilvyOne, DoubleClick,
ADForce, and Motorola. The companies initially met in mid-July and
announced the formation of the group on Monday.
http://www.radiate.com/press/releases/aug07-00.html
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o Political Sites Debuting During Conventions
Washington, DC -- Major political web sites have been busy ramping up
their presence for the political party conventions. During last week's
Republican convention, political Internet companies -- most of them
providing some streaming coverage -- were actively trying to differentiate
themselves from the pack. "The convention was both a litmus test and a
coming-out party for the new for-profit political digerati, who occupied
skyboxes and overflowed a media center that instantly became known as
Internet Alley," wrote Time magazine. Many analysts are doubtful that the
market can sustain the dozens of for-profit political web sites that have
developed in recent years. "I liken the new sites to the specialty stores
you see at Christmas," Preston Dodd, an analyst at Jupiter Communications,
was quoted as saying in the Time magazine article. "You wonder what
they'll do after the elections, let alone for the next four years." Time
magazine highlighted a number of the prominent political sites that were
active at the Republican convention including Voter.com, Grassroots.com,
Pseudo.com ABC.com, CNN.com, SpeakOut.com, Time.com, VoxCap.com,
WashingtonPost.com, and Politics.com.
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o Briefly Noted:
(New York) Record label Elektra, a unit of Time Warner, has launched a new
web site that promotes its artists that include AC/DC, Phish and
Metallica. Executives have hinted that the relaunched site could
eventually sell downloads of the label's songs.
http://www.elektra.com/
(Los Angeles) As traditional record companies begin Internet download
programs, they are increasing looking to web portals as a means of
distribution. CNET reported today that the negotiations between record
labels and portals can be a tortuous process. "While both sides realize
that a portal's traffic leads to a wider audience, striking deals for
access to song libraries remains a difficult journey," the article said.
"Portals have made a business of giving away content and services for
free, be it news, email or instant messaging. On the other hand, the
labels run businesses based on direct sales of CDs through music
retailers."
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-2451568.html?tag=st.ne.1005.thed.ni
(Sudbury, Ma.) Exotec, a provider of technology for the delivery of
streaming media over the Internet, today announced that it is changing its
name to Vividon. The Massachusetts-based company has received over $4
million in venture capital from Atlas Venture and Carlyle Venture
Partners.
http://www.vividon.com/content/PR1.html
(New York) Hollywood.com, an entertainment-focused web site, today
announced that it has signed an advertising and sponsorship agreement with
DoubleClick, one of the leading Internet advertising companies.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/000807/ny_hollywo.html
(Wallingord, Ct.) eUniverse, an Internet entertainment network, today
announced that it will move its headquarters from Connecticut to Los
Angeles. The company also announced that its current chairman, Brad
Greenspan, has been named as its new CEO. "Los Angeles was a natural
choice for us as we shift our focus from solely e-commerce to our network
of entertainment sites," said Greenspan. eUniverse runs a network of
e-commerce and entertainment sites including CD Universe, an online
retailer of movies, music, and games. The company said it would hire
between 10-15 employees for its LA office.
http://www.euniverse.com
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/000807/ca_euniver.html
(Richmond, Va.) iPipe, Inc., an Internet content distributor and
advertising services company, announced today that it has signed an online
distribution agreement with Creators Syndicate, one of the world's largest
syndicating companies. The deal allows iPipe to distribute eleven of
Creators Syndicate's properties, including comic strips "Heathcliff", "One
Big Happy", and "Wee Pals". Other features under the deal include columns
by Oliver North, Robert Novak, Mark Shields, Tony Snow, Mona Charen, Linda
Chavez and Thomas Sowell.
http://www.ipipe.com
(Honolulu, HI) KCCN 1420 AM, a radio station that broadcasts University of
Hawaii sports, today announced an Internet broadcast and marketing
partnership with RainbowSportsNetwork.com. Under the agreement, over 140
University of Hawaii sporting events will be broadcast live over the
Internet at RainbowSportsNetwork.com.
http://www.rainbowsportsnetwork.com
(Fort Washington, Pa.) CDNOW, an online retailer of CDs, announced today
that it has expanded the number of songs available for its customized CD
service. The service allows users to select 12 songs for their own CD.
CDNOW said the customized CD service now offers over 10,000 songs from
imix.com, an Internet syndication and distribution company. In July, CDNOW
announced that it would be acquired by Bertelsmann.
http://www.cdnow.com/custom
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