Palo Alto, Calif. — One day after announcing former eBay head Meg Whitman as its new CEO, Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard (HP) on Friday saw its shares on the New York Stock Exchange sink to their lowest point since May .
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment today formally released its new Facebook game “The Big Bang Theory: Mystic Warlords of Kaa,” which has been in beta since July 27. The timing is not accidental. Warner Bros. Television’s hit comedy returns to the screen tonight on CBS in back-to-back episodes kicking off its fifth season, having recently started to air five nights a week in off-network syndication.
NBCUniversal announced that Emilio Romano has been named president of Telemundo effective in October. In his new position, Romano will lead the Telemundo broadcast network and its 14 owned stations, Telemundos Digital Media group, Telemundo International, the News and Sports divisions, the Entertainment division and Telemundo Studios. He also will have oversight of sales, marketing, and mun2, the cable network for young bicultural Latinos.
Pandoras total redesign, as the music streaming service unveiled today, goes deeper than its refreshed looks and its many new features. The move to an HTML5-based architecture also enables new advertising opportunities, like campaigns that span both web and mobile, and makes third-party integrations much more possible.
Web incubator TechStars, currently the subject of a Bloomberg TV reality show, announced a new fund of over $24 million which will be used to offer a $100,000 convertible debt note to every company it accepts. The funding is provided by a pool of venture capital firms that includes Avalon, DFJ Mercury, Foundry Group, IA Ventures, Right Side Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, SoftBank Capital, DFJ Mercury and RRE, as well as TechStars alumni and several individuals.
Two more movies are going to be released on UltraViolet, doubling the number of films available to users of the digital locker platform. When the Blu-ray version of “The Smurfs” and “Friends with Benefits” go on sale Dec. 2, the Sony Pictures films will have the capability to be shared across multiple home and mobile devices at no additional cost, using the DECE consortiums licensed technology. The news was confirmed by John Calkins, Sony Pictures Home Entertainments executive vice president, Global Digital and Commercial Innovation.
College Park, Md. - Despite a bleak overall U.S. jobs outlook, a new study by the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business finds that a new industry focused around the creation of Facebook apps has added at least 182,000 new jobs and contributed more than $12.2 billion in wages and benefits to the U.S. economy this year. .
Microsoft and The CW Network have partnered on a mutual marketing campaign, TV to Bing About, timed to coincide with the beginning of the fall television season. The slogan is a hybrid of the CWs TV to Talk About and Microsofts attempt to turn Bing into a verb, like that other search engine. The CW Network targets an 18 - 34 viewership and skews female, making it an attractive but increasingly difficult to reach demographic.
Reston, Va. - The head of Reston-based wireless broadband firm LightSquared has begun firing back following allegations from Republican lawmakers that the company has received special favors from the Obama administration. The Daily Beast first reported that the White House allegedly pressured Air Force Gen. William Shelton to change his testimony before Congress and downplay the potential effects of LightSquared’s satellite signals on the Global Positioning System (GPS). .
Burst Media today took the wraps off what its been doing since blinkx acquired it in April. The content publisher launched four channels designed to gather together like-minded people, then forge a connection between these consumers with the advertisers who love them. The new channels are: Giant Realm, for gamers; MumIQ, for mothers; Ignition, for car aficionados; and Ella, for fashionistas. .