901am

New Media News Every Morning

Six Apart’s Berkowitz steps down, turns over CEO post to Chris Alden

By

Six Apart‘s Barak Berkowitz is stepping down and turning over his post as Chief Executive Officer to Chris Alden, after leading the company for almost four years.

Chris Alden, who headed the company’s software unit after its acquisition of Rojo Networks, has been with the company for a little over a year. He was the former CEO (and co-founder) of Rojo.

San Francisco-based Six Apart is widely known for its TypePad content management software, now catering to over 40 million users a month, with about 150 employees.

“As we’ve brought the business to scale, the board and I have been talking about my desire to take on a smaller role,” Berkowitz said in a statement. “With the company so stable and on a great growth track, it’s a natural time to make a transition.”

Originally posted on September 15, 2007 @ 2:40 am

Google announces official acquisition of Postini

By

In its continuous initiative to stretch their applications and business product offerings, internet giant Google announces its official acquisition of Postini, a company that delivers on-demand web security solutions, amounting to $625 million.

Google states that they acquired Postini “in order to create a more complete Google Apps solution that addresses the information security and compliances issues facing businesses of all sizes.” With Postini’s spam and virus protection products, Google aims to continue their initiative against unwanted and malicious messages, and in turn, enhance their applications, as well as security and corporate compliance.

Now a fully-owned subsidiary of Google. Postini products as well as employess will be integrated to the Google family within the next couple of months. With Postini having over 35,000 customers worldwide, and Google with over 100,000 businesses on Google aps, Postini being a part of Google family is definitely an asset on both ends.

Via GB.

Originally posted on September 13, 2007 @ 10:09 pm

MTV launches social network tonight

By

So the buzz is true, MTV is indeed launching a social network in the form of Flux.com and it’s going to be launched, surprise surprise, tonight.

While MTV already has various networks across the web, the Flux.com technology will connect them all together in one platform, allowing members to create one single profile page for all their MTV accounts. Flux.com is developed by Tagworld.

Much is still yet to be seen, but it won’t be long before MTV reveals how they’ll go about this new social network. Let’s see. Tonight.

Originally posted on September 14, 2007 @ 4:53 am

Filed Under: MTV

Hulu acquires video startup Mojiti

By

NBC / News Corp acquires Beijing-based video startup Mojiti to use their platform for its much awaited $1 billion video project, Hulu.

With a mission to “allow you to tell your own story in any online video”, Mojiti, interestingly, do not host or distribute video content themselves. Instead, they take existing video content online (for example, from YouTube or Google); integrate their technology to these videos in the form of interactive features such as speech bubbles, arrows, shapes and texts, etc; allowing users to personalize the videos to their liking. With this quiet acquisition of Mojiti, one can’t help but assume that this is the format Hulu’s going to take as they launch the site that was said to trample YouTube.

There is no confirmations yet, as of this writing, how much the deal was. However, there were rumors that the acquisition amounted to around $10 million.

Via TechCrunch

Originally posted on September 13, 2007 @ 4:40 am

Motorola launches online applications catalog for mobile users

By

Motorola Solutions CatalogMotorola launches its first-ever comprehensive solutions catalog, intened to connect developers with consumers to provide them software applications that they can use with their Motorola devices.

With this online catalog, users can download the latest games, customization tools, and other applications to take their Motorola experience to the next level.

“Applications are key to differentiating and enhancing the overall product experience,” said Christy Wyatt, Motorola’s VP of software platforms and ecosystem. “By using our new Motorola Solutions Catalog, developers can easily and quickly bring their innovative applications directly to end users so they can do even more with their Motorola products.”

Not only users are given fast and easy access to the latest applications, the Motorola Solutions Catalog also provides developers a platform that allows them to easily add product descriptions, screen shots, search functionality, and purchase options.

“By featuring our applications on the new Motorola Solutions Catalog, we’re effectively creating additional visibility for our solutions,” said Gonzague de Vallois, VP of publishing of Gameloft, one of Motorola’s providers of game applications. “Leveraging this new channel to market will enable us to build a broader base of users and drive further awareness around hot new Gameloft mobile games like Guitar Legend.”

Originally posted on September 13, 2007 @ 5:26 am