According to a Financial Times report, Microsoft is in discussions with News Corporation and others about pulling content from Google
According to the Financial Times, News Corp had a meeting with Microsoft about de-indexing Google
The next battle in the search wars could be over access to news content. The FT reports that Microsoft – which has made increasing the market share of its Bing search engine its top online priority – has reached out to “big online publishers” in order to get them to pull their sites from Google. Among the parties currently in discussions with Microsoft is News Corp., which has very loudly threatened to block search engines from crawling the content of its newspapers.
Unclear how far along these discussions are, although TechCrunch also reported a week ago that Microsoft had a meeting with representatives from top British papers, including the Financial Times, about giving their content “premium positions” on Bing. Read more…
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ITV on course to beat already-upgraded ad revenue forecast by at least £10m, after sales market ‘goes ballistic’
Mark Sweney guardian
ITV has had a further advertising rush since telling the City on 5 November that its revenue would be up
ITV is on target for a bumper December, with advertising revenue expected to be up 12% year on year for ITV1 and 11% across its channel portfolio compared to 2008, bringing in at least £10m more than forecast.
The UK’s biggest advertiser-funded broadcaster, which informed the City on 5 November that ad revenue across its channels would be up 4% next month, has since benefited from a late rush of Christmas spending in a TV market one senior media buying executive said was currently “going ballistic”.
Before ITV’s surprise upgrade of its December ad forecast earlier this month, the broadcaster is estimated to have been looking at bringing in about £109m in revenue in the Christmas month. Following the upgrade, these estimates were pushed out to about £112m by media buying agencies.
However, with agencies now predicting a renewed surge in income it is estimated that ITV’s portfolio of channels will net close to £120m, an increase of £11m over the 5 November forecast.
The boost has been driven by an approximate 40% year-on-year increase in ad spend by food companies, a 47% boost by drinks brands, a 44% climb in advertising by confectionery firms and a 40% lift in pharmaceutical spend. Read more…
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Dutch company behind Big Brother buys Tiger Aspect and two other independent producers in deal thought to be worth £30m-£40m
Jason Deans guardian.co.uk
Endemol, the Dutch company behind Big Brother, has bought independent producers Tiger Aspect, Darlow Smithson and Tigress from IMG, in a deal reportedly worth £30m-40m.
The deal is expected to make Endemol’s UK subsidiary the biggest British independent producer, with annual turnover of around £250m. All3Media was previously the biggest UK indie, with annual revenues of around £220m.
Tiger Aspect produces a range of drama, comedy and factual programming with shows including Benidorm, Harry and Paul, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, and Ross Kemp on Gangs.
Factual specialist Darlow Smithson is the company behind documentaries such as The Falling Man, Thriller in Manila, Miracle on the Hudson and Touching the Void. Darlow Smithson subsidiary Tigress specialises in wildlife and science programming. Read more…
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Can Logitech’s Squeezebox bring the riches of internet radio to the kitchen table? Well, it can make a good try
Jack Schofield The Guardian.
Logitech Squeezebox radio connects to your home Wi-Fi
For anyone annoyed by the UK’s lack of a decent radio station devoted to jazz – or to country, electronica, polka, soul, world music or whatever – there’s a huge selection of internet radio stations. The problem is getting them to a kitchen or bedside table in a way that’s easy to use. Logitech’s Squeezebox Radio (£149.99) almost manages it, but the setup procedures and control buttons need rethinking.
It looks the part, and the mono sound quality is good by tabletop radio standards. It has half a dozen preset buttons, so once installed, it works much like any other radio. But the setting-up looks likely to put some non-techies off. Read more…
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Health visitors would be encouraged to tell mothers and fathers about websites offering advice on parenting, Conservative leader says
Andrew Sparrow.
David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative party, meets mothers from the Mumsnet website for the first time in 2006. Photograph: Fiona Hanson/PA
David Cameron yesterday said a Conservative government would promote Mumsnet and other “good parenting websites” as part of a drive to encourage “social action” as an alternative to state action.
The Tory leader said health visitors would be encouraged to tell parents about websites such as Mumsnet and that information about these resources would be made available in all maternity units, early years settings and family information services.
A Tory government would also back a Mumsnet plan to set up a mentoring scheme to connect new parents with experienced mothers. Read more…
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So how’s Twitter going to make any money? One of its biggest fans, British actor and polymath Stephen Fry, gave co-founder Biz Stone one idea when the pair shared a Nesta panel in London on Thursday…
“Supposing I was to say to someone: ‘you can have my Twitter identity for an hour on Wednesday if you pay me x pounds and you can speak to a million people direct’,” said Fry, whose follower count just passed seven figures.
But Fry wasn’t being deadly serious, and Stone is content persevering with Twitter’s cautious, softly-softly monetisation plans. He said plans to start selling corporate accounts, first hinted at in August, are on-course. A pay-for package offering verified streams and an analytics package will be available by year’s end, he said. Read more…
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Here Florian Schmitt, creative director of hi-res!, comments on the new logo
Yesterday AOL provided us with a preview of its coming up new brand identity as the official spinout from Time Warner at December 10 comes near. Is shows a plain text logo in front of changing pictures like a weird staring at you goldfish to a ping floating brain and a rock-star hand symbol. The new logo that replaces the running man symbolises the ever-changing content. It was created by the brand consultancy Wolff Olins.
CEO Tim Armstrong told paidContent in an interview “…it’s going to be very, very, very inexpensive because we’re focused on just improving the products and services. I would say the marketing budget is the budget we’re using on product development and the changes we’re making.” Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.
The new brand identity replaces the letters AOL with “Aol.” - complete with a period Here are some reaction to the new logo. 
Florian Schmitt of the London based design agency Hi-Res!: “I like the idea of changing and adaptive logos, but this is such a literal and clichéed attempt at it. I happen to know that they had very little time to finish this, but even so, this is poor. It’s literally the first thing you would do as a moodboard and the first thing you would put in the trash as well.”
Om Malik of technology site GigaOM: “It is ambiguous at best, and as sexy as the obese, shapeless humans living on Axiom, the flagship of the BnL fleet in Pixar movie ‘WALL-E.’” Read more…
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Internet retailers are preparing for a deluge of online orders on their busiest day of the year in the lead-up to ChristmasDavid Levene goes behind the scenes at Amazon’s central UK distribution centre in Milton Keynes Link to this video
In a vast warehouse, the size of eight football pitches and around 15 minutes from the centre of Milton Keynes, more than a thousand workers are gearing up for what will likely be Amazon’s busiest Christmas yet. Read more…
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Twitter has updated the way its users pass on tweets – and bloggers are not amused
Twitter tries to guide its users gently through the new changes 
As well as Twitter asking “What’s happening?” rather than “What are you doing?” it has recently introduced a retweet function. In addition to the low-tech old-school retweets, which are still supported, it offers links under each post with an automatic retweet option.
When selected it asks you simply “Retweet to your followers?” and when you confim, the tweet is reposted. A “Retweets” link in the right column lets users see statistics including the most frequent retweets on Twitter or retweets of their posts.
But the new system is not without hitches. The biggest one is that the retweeted messages now appear under the original Twitterer’s name and picture, so your followers might have difficulties recognising who the sender is and wonder who these strange tweeters are in their twitter stream. Secondly, you can’t add your own comment anymore, so on the website mini-editorialisation is over for now. Read more…
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