901am

New Media News Every Morning

The Pirate Bay sold to gaming company

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The team behind The Pirate Bay have announced that they have sold the site to Global Gaming Factory. Rumours say the site is sold for €5.6m, half cash half stock in Global Gaming Factory. The Pirate Bay team will have a press conference in the next minutes.

TPB is being sold for a great bit underneath it’s value if the money would be the interesting part. It’s not. The interesting thing is that the right people with the right attitude and possibilities keep running the site.
As all of you know, there’s not been much news on the site for the past two-three years. It’s the same site essentially. On the internets, stuff dies if it doesn’t evolve. We don’t want that to happen.

We’ve been working on this project for many years. It’s time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody. We need that, or the site will die. And letting TPB die is the last thing that is allowed to happen!

If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That’s the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to. And – you can now not only share files but shares with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That’s awesome and will take the heat of us.

The old crew is still around in different ways. We will also not stop being active in the politics of the internets – quite the opposite. Now we’re fueling up for going into the next gear. TPB will have economical muscles to let people evolve it. It will team up with great technicians to evolve the protocols. And we, the people interested in more than just technology, will have the time to focus on that. It’s win-win-win.

The profits from the sale will go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openess of the nets. I hope everybody will help out in that and realize that this is the best option for all. Don’t worry – be happy!

Global Gaming Factory also acquired Peerialism. Combining both platforms, GGF wants to establish itself as a major player in the digital content distribution sector.

Originally posted on June 30, 2009 @ 6:04 am

Bing gains but still way too far to challenge Google

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Bing has increased Microsoft’s share of the search market by 1% in the US according to analysis for June conducted by StatCounter. Google, obviously, still dominates the US search market.

Microsoft (Bing, Live Search and MSN Search in total) had 8.23% market share in June, behind Yahoo! at 11.04% according to monthly analysis by StatCounter Global Stats. Google has fallen back slightly from 79.07% in April to 78.48% in June but maintains its strong foothold on the lead. Nothing to worry for Serge and Larry.

Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter, said:

“At first sight, a 1% increase in market share does not appear to be a huge return on the investment Microsoft has made in Bing but the underlying trend appears positive. Steady if not spectacular might be the best way to describe performance to date.”

Data is based on an analysis of 1.316 billion search engine referring clicks (336 million from the US) which were collected from the StatCounter network of over three million websites.

Originally posted on July 2, 2009 @ 9:35 am

Nimbuzz to work without 3G or Wi-fi

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Some months ago we covered Nimbuzz for the iPhone. The company now announced that they will also offer their service, even without available 3G or Wi-fi, after they closed a deal with Belgian service Voxbone. Thanks to the new offer from Nimbuzz, VOiP and Skype now also are available over 2G. The service will offer a local area number to call over 2G and then Skype contacts and VOiP is available. With the Skype application for iPhone you need to be connected to a Wi-fi network.

Nimbuzz is also available for several other smart phones such as the Nokia N97 and phones based on the Symbian platform.

Originally posted on June 22, 2009 @ 11:13 am

Last.fm founders to leave the CBS ship soon

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In a statement released today on the Last.fm blog 3 of the founders of the London (UK) based music discovery and recommendation service are leaving the CBSi Music company. According to the blog entry this is the latest (last?) step in handing over the reins to CBSi Media, who acquired Last.fm in Spring 2007 for $280million.

From the announcement:

After two years running Last.fm within CBS we feel the time is right to begin the process of handing over the reins. This is the latest stage in a long journey for us founders, which began in a living room in East London in 2002, and took us to the headquarters of one of the biggest media companies in the world.

Felix Miller also announced that the service more than doubled in number of unique monthly users over the last 12 months (Compete stats for last.fm top-url show an increase above 50% over the last 12 months).

Read the complete announcement here

Originally posted on June 10, 2009 @ 12:40 pm

Splashpress Media Wire Week 23

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901am Is part of the blog network Splashpress Media. Splashpress Media maintains more than 100 blogs and also offers several internet and blogging related services. We will weekly feature some of the best content across the network.

New Editor at Splashpress Media

On Monday Jayvee Fernandez was announced as new editor for all blogs maintained by Splashpress Media. Jayvee is an experienced editor and has previously maintained the b5media Inc. technology channel.
Read the announcement here.

WordPress and WordPressMU will merge: good or bad

Blog Herald editor, and designer of many Splashpress Media blogs, Thord Daniel Hedengren shares his opinion on the announced merger of WordPress with WordPressMU.
Read at The Blog Herald.

Domain names and self-hosted content still important in a Web 2.0 world

Andy Merret on the important role of self-hosted content and domain names.
Read the entry at Performancing.

The next revolution will come in waves. Google Waves

901am Was not the only Splashpress Media blog reporting the much hyped Google Wave preview. Sophia Lucero also reviewed the announcement at Wisdump.
Read Sophia’s take here.

Looking for a blog conference in your area: Check the blog conference calendar at The Blog Herald

Our colleagues at The Blog Herald announced a new service this week. The Blog Herald now is your first resource if you’re looking for a blog conference in your area.
Find all blog conferences in The Blog Herald’s blog conference calendar.

Yahoo! 360 Closing Shop. How Confident Are You With Your Blogging Service Provider?

After the announcement that Yahoo! 360 will be closed J. Angelo Racoma wonders how safe it is to keep all your content on a hosted service such as Blogger or WordPress.com.
Read the entry at Performancing.

Sexy girls clean your iPhone screen

Over at Forever Geek yours truly announced a new iPhone application bringing sexy girls to your Jesus phone.
Read the entry at Forever Geek.

Is Norton cool enough to have its own comic

Andy announced the news that Norton, from Norton Security ‘fame’, an own comic launched. Are they cool enough for this?
Read the entry at Forever Geek.

Splashpress Media finally on Facebook

Last but not least, Splashpress Media finally launched its own Facebook page. You can now follow a selection of the finest Splashpress Media content on Facebook.

And 901am finally has a 901am Twitter account.

Originally posted on June 6, 2009 @ 4:01 pm