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Play.me Jumps on the Freemium Bandwagon, But Will the Model Stick?

Play.me, a new service launched by Italian company Dada Entertainment, launched this week, offering both free and paid plans to music consumers in the U.S. and Italy, with more countries on the way. The launch comes as U.S. consumers continue to wait for the arrival of Spotify, which also sports a freemium model. But music labels’ enthusiasm for free streaming services appears to be on the wane, and as such, whether the freemium model will remain intact for the music business remains unclear.

Play.me’s free version doesn’t even have ads yet, although Chairman Massimiliano Pellegrini said it will soon have both audio and visual advertising. He also acknowledged that what it offers for free may change, but for now Play.me provides 10 hours of streaming music each week plus one downloadable MP3. The company has already launched an Android mobile app that features offline caching, with iPhone and BlackBerry apps due “within weeks,” he said.

To be sure, Play.me has the feel of an unfinished service, and Pellegrini readily admits that the company is still experimenting in search of a sustainable model. Only two of the four majors, Sony and EMI, have provided songs to Play.me, which for now severely handicaps its chances of convincing people to pay $9.99 a month for all they can stream (plus five MP3s). In an interview, Pellegrini told me Dada is negotiating with Warner Music Group, and hopes to build on an existing partnership with Universal; independents are represented through deals with key distributors IODA, Beggars Group and the Orchard.

Play.me’s entry further crowds a music subscription market that includes Spotify, incumbents Rhapsody (owned by RealNetworks) and Best Buy-owned Napster, new entrant MOG, and forthcoming Rdio. As I’ve written before, the key differentiators will be cost, library, user interface, free components and mobile app quality; Play.me offers a generous free service, a fairly limited library that doesn’t yet justify its price point, and a user interface with room for improvement. (I haven’t tested the mobile app.) So for now, it’s another place to get free music that will struggle to convert free users to paid customers. Sound familiar?

January 8, 2010
MIT MBA Students: Amazon, Google, and T-Mobile Are Hiring, Expedia Isn’t; Microsoft “Super Interesting,” Apple Is “Sterile”

Software, talent, recruiting

Gregory T. Huang wrote:

[Updated 3:30pm 1/9/10 with clarification (see below)] If you want to know which companies are looking to hire top young business talent around town, just ask the group of 20 or so first-year MBA students from MIT Sloan School of Management. The students from Cambridge, MA, are in Seattle this week looking to make contacts for jobs and summer internships.

It’s all part of the annual “tech trek” program in which some 150 Sloan MBA students split up to visit companies in Seattle, Silicon Valley, and the Boston area. The students on the Seattle leg visited Adobe, Microsoft, and RealNetworks yesterday, and they are at Amazon, Starbucks, and T-Mobile today.

I met up with a group of them over drinks last night. They had a refreshingly candid perspective on job prospects at Seattle tech companies, and some valuable insights into the local tech-business scene. (Almost worth the $43 parking ticket I got from the BluWater Bistro lot—it’s been one of those weeks.)

“The job market is better than last year. Companies are very receptive, and positions are open,” says Sloan student Hilda Tang, a former management consultant in New York City and a native of Vancouver, BC. Tang helped organize this year’s trip to Seattle, together with fellow first-year Ryan Thurston, a former design engineer and product manager at Seattle-based Impinj. “Everyone’s hiring, but they’re hedging their bets,” Thurston says.

Kathryn Wepfer, another Sloan student, previously worked for four years at General Electric in Massachusetts managing a technology development program (defense work). Wepfer went on the Silicon Valley leg of the trip earlier this week, where Sloan students visited VMware, Cisco, Google, Apple, LinkedIn, Yahoo, and Zynga. Last year, Google and Yahoo didn’t participate, as their hiring was on hold. This year, the students say Google is hiring selectively for positions in finance, operations, marketing, and business development; Yahoo didn’t impress, with one student commenting, “What are [they], really?”

It sounds like some companies were much better at marketing themselves to students than others. The strongest reaction I got was when I asked about their visit to Apple (in Silicon Valley). “Everyone came away totally creeped out,” one student said, adding that the company came off as “secretive” and “sterile,” and that during their visit, at least one Apple employee admitted it wasn’t a great place to work while Steve Jobs was on leave.

[This paragraph added on 1/9/10 for more context on Apple—Eds.] This student followed up with me later to say, “We heard from people in finance, marketing, and product management—everyone hands down was very excited about their job and being part of the Apple community. It’s a very attractive company to me, but it is somewhat difficult to see the reality of the secretive culture that may be necessary to maintain Apple’s ability to create products that change the world. I, and I think the rest of the group, appreciated their openness and honesty.”

On the Seattle front, I had to wonder about Microsoft, which is coming off a year of …Next Page »

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January 8, 2010
France Considers ‘Right To Forget’ Law, Apparently Not Realizing The Internet Never Forgets

Hot on the heels of France considering laws to tax successful internet companies to try to prop up unsuccessful entertainment industry companies, comes a report that France is also considering a special “right to forget” law, which would allow anyone to ask that any information about them be deleted after a certain period of time. At first, I though that they meant content created by the person asking for it to be deleted (like emails), but it sounds like they mean any content about a person. So, say, if you did something embarrassing in college, and your friends put pictures of it online, once the time limit for the “right to forget” law kicked in, you could demand every version of that picture be taken offline. Yeah. Like that will work. Trying to suppress information online doesn’t work, no matter what law you put in place. I’m reminded of the convicted German murderer, who is demanding that information on his conviction be removed from Wikipedia under a similar type of law. All that did was call a lot more attention to the story.

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January 8, 2010
Hands-on: Dell Mini 3 [Smartphones]

Dell is bringing their Android cellphone to the US and calling it the Mini 3. I got to grope it for a few moments amongst other media-folk.

In the hand, it doesn’t feel nearly as solid as the Nexus One—it’s more like a hollow-feeling plastic than most of the smartphones on the market.

Dell, of course, has their own UI for Android. We didn’t get to see much of it, other than the main icon screen you’ll note in our lead shot. I just don’t know why anyone would want the Mini 3. Nothing about the hardware immediately grabbed me like the Nexus One did, and it’s stuck on AT&T.

You’re free to feel differently.

January 8, 2010
This Might Be the Next iPhone’s Graphics Chip [Prediction]

Imagination Technologies, which was responsible for the PowerVR SGX GPU chip in the iPhone 3GS, just announced the next version in the same line. Hence, this might be the next-gen iPhone GPU. And it’s a nice chip.

The PowerVR SGX545 (iPhone 3GS had the SGX535) has OpenGL 3.2 and Open CL 1.0 support, runs at 200MHz and can even do “HD” output. It can even support DirectX 10.1. Here’s the full support list:

* DirectX10.1 API support
* Enhanced support for DirectX10 Geometry Shaders
* DirectX10 Data assembler support (Vertex, primitive and instance ID generation)
* Render target resource array support
* Full arbitrary non power of two texture support
* Full filtering support for F16 texture types
* Support for all DirectX10 mandated texture formats
* Sampling from unresolved MSAA surfaces
* Support for Gamma on output pixels
* Order dependent coverage based AA (anti-aliased lines)
* Enhanced line rasterisation

There’s no guarantee that this is the chip that’s going to be in the iPhone 3GSS, or iPhone 4G or iPhone 3GVideo, or whatever, but it’s a good next step. [Apple Insider]

January 8, 2010
Pre-diabetic? Can I trust my meter?

I went to the Dr. the other day and asked that I be tested for low thyroid. I have a lot of those symptoms. I am sure I’m also pre-menopausal (recent), but the thyroid symptoms came years earlier. Dr. asked about diabetes test and I said, "No, I check my bg (random)all the time at home because my dog is diabetic." I do check it all the time, but since she mentioned it, I thought I would do a first morning fasting test and then check it after each meal.

Upon waking, I tested at 101.
2 hrs after a meal, I tested at 120.
Random between meal test 99,130,111 ( in no specific order)

This morning upon waking 109.
1 hour after meal 130

I was reading the pamphlet that came with my TrueResult strips and the numbers can be -/+ 20% ( I knew this)AND, that it can be as much as 70 mg/dl higher after recently eating than lab tests! I did not know this! I’m wondering if I should have a bg fasting test done at a lab?

I also notice a huge difference in some readings that are taken 1 right after the other in a matter of seconds. Which number should I use? I also have 3 meters and while they all seem to be within range of each other, sometimes they give such different readings I have no idea which number to use.

I forgot to mention, in case it matters, my blood pressure is perfect and my cholesterol is in normal range. I am 50lbs overweight and never hungry. Can’t seem to lose weight even with exercise.

January 8, 2010
Stay Warm with Mexican Style Soup!!!

For some reason it seams that a lot of places around the world are experiencing their coldest winters to date. Even in Florida it’s extra chilly. So the best thing to do is stay inside, cuddle up with a book, and drink a lot of great soup! Making homemade soup is really easy and rewarding because you can freeze the leftovers.

With the leftover turkey my Mom had after the holidays she made this incredible Mexican style soup. The warmth and the spices are sure to keep you cozy during this extra cold winter.

Ingredients:

Add the following:

leftover chicken/turkey or just make meatless
1 chopped onion,
1 chopped green pepper
1 small can corn niblets
1 large can stewed tomatoes
1/2 red kidney beans (add whole can if you like)
4 cloves chopped garlic
4 tbs chopped cilantro
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregeno
Black pepper to taste

If you want spicy add chopped jalapeno and or dash of cayenne pepper.

Simmer for couple of hours and eat the next day with bread, tortillas. The longer you let it simmer the better it will taste. You can also add rice if you want a heartier meal.

Enjoy!

Image & Recipe Source: My Mom!

Post from: Blisstree

Stay Warm with Mexican Style Soup!!!

January 8, 2010

FORTUNE: Kraft’s cheesy math

By Colin Barr, senior writerJanuary 8, 2010: 12:53 PM ET

NEW YORK (Fortune) — In the strange but true department, a recent securities filing by Kraft Foods seems to stretch the value stock investors are willing to place on the company.

A proxy statement filed with regulators last month presents a statement of Kraft’s (KFT, Fortune 500) financials as of the end of the third quarter. Near the bottom of that table, on page 16, the company lists its period-end price-to-earnings ratio as 17.

That calculation reflects the Northfield, Ill., company’s Sept. 30 closing stock price, $26.27, divided by its per-share earnings, $1.56, for the first nine months of the year.

But wait — aren’t P/E ratios usually calculated using annual earnings, or the equivalent, for the purpose of comparing the stock price to the company’s annual profitability?

Indeed they are. And because Kraft made 43 cents a share in last year’s fourth quarter (this year’s numbers haven’t yet been reported), the company’s earnings for the last 12 months are $1.99 a share.

That puts Kraft’s P/E at a more pedestrian 13 — which is below its level of previous years (see chart above) and below the multiple of the S&P 500 index of big companies.

Investor discontent over Kraft’s slow growth is no secret. Indeed, CEO Irene Rosenfeld alluded to those concerns in September, when the company launched a $17 billion bid for U.K. candy maker Cadbury (CBY).

“This proposed combination is about growth,” Rosenfeld said.

But Kraft’s slow growth isn’t the only thing chafing some investors. Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA, Fortune 500), released a letter this week objecting to Kraft’s plans to issue hundreds of millions of new shares in the deal.

Buffett, whose firm owns 9.4% of Kraft (purchased mostly at higher prices than prevail now) and is the company’s biggest shareholder, said he views Kraft shares as undervalued and thus unsuitable for heavy issuance in a merger.

Oddly, Kraft seemed to concur. The company announced plans this week to sell its frozen pizza business to Nestle in order to raise cash that will be used instead of stock should the Cadbury deal come to fruition.

That move surprised some analysts.

“While a divestiture is not a complete shock, we admit to being caught off guard by the nature of this specific transaction,” Stifel Nicolaus analyst Christopher Growe wrote in a note to clients this week. “The frozen pizza business was widely regarded as a key growth pillar for Kraft, one of the company’s fastest growing businesses in our view and thus likely not the first choice for sale.”

What’s more, Kraft called its stock “undervalued” in a press statement and added that “its share price is depressed as a consequence of a number of short term factors which it believes will dissipate once the uncertainty surrounding its Offer for Cadbury is resolved.”

Though it seems clear Kraft has been feeling pressure on its valuation, the company says the calculations in its filings weren’t tweaked for the sake of presenting a rosier picture.

“It is simply a nine-month number, like all the other numbers presented for 2009,” said Kraft spokesman Mike Mitchell. “There’s no sense of manipulation.”

The strange P/E calculation comes in a proxy filing that was mailed last month to shareholders who will soon vote on plans tied to the Cadbury bid.

Misstatements in proxy filings can attract the interest of securities lawyers and regulators, though there is no sign as yet that anyone is objecting to Kraft’s figures.

That doesn’t make the whole episode any less odd, however.

“It does seem out of the ordinary,” said Eleanor Bloxham, who runs the Value Alliance corporate governance watchdog in Westerville, Ohio. “This is an M&A issue so it’s a bigger deal.”

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FoMoCo to launch or upgrade nine new engines, six new transmissions in 2010

Ford 5.0L BOSS V8

FoMoCo announced today that it will introduce nine new or upgraded engines and new transmissions in North America in 2010 as a part of a 5-year plan to overhaul its global powertrain offerings. The move is a part of a plan that began in 2008 and will continue through 2013 and includes 60 new or significantly upgraded engines, transmissions and transaxles globally over the 5 year period.

During 2010, Ford will launch new engines and transmission in its Fiesta, Mustang, Super Duty and F-150. The 2011 Ford Fiesta will highlight the new 119-hp 1.6L 4-cylinder engine and the PowerShift dual-clutch transmission that helps the compact car deliver an estimated 40 mpg on the highway. The 2011 Mustang lineup will feature a Ti-VCT 305-hp 3.7L V6 for the base model, while the 2011 Mustang GT will get Ford’s new 412-hp 5.0L V8. Both version of the Mustang will get a manual or automatic 6-speed transmission.

Ford said that one of the most advanced and fuel-efficient North American powertrains will debut on the 2012 Ford Focus. The engine will be a new 2.0L Ti-VCT four-cylinder and will debut next week in the 2012 Focus at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show.

Follow the jump to see the complete list of engines and transmissions scheduled for 2010.

Scheduled for 2010 are:

Engines	Transmissions
1.6-liter Fiesta I-4	6-speed automatic FWD
2.0-liter Focus DI I-4	6-speed PowerShift Fiesta
2.0-liter Ecoboost I-4	6-speed PowerShift Focus
3.5-liter F-150 EcoBoost V-6	6-speed manual Mustang
3.7-liter Mustang V-6	6-speed automatic Mustang
5.0-liter Mustang V-8	6-speed automatic TorqShift Super Duty
5.4-liter Shelby GT 500 V-8
6.2-liter Super Duty (gas)
6.7-liter Super Duty Power Stroke

Press Release:

FORD LAUNCHES UNPRECEDENTED NINE NEW ENGINES, SIX NEW TRANSMISSIONS IN NORTH AMERICA IN 2010

Ford will introduce nine new or upgraded engines and six new transmissions in North America this year as part of a five-year effort to overhaul its entire global powertrain portfolio, which totals 60 new powertrains
Ford’s all-new normally aspirated 2.0-liter direct injection engine will power the 2012 Focus in North America
Ford will bring state-of-the-art fuel-saving technology, including twin independent variable cam timing (Ti-VCT), direct injection, six-speed and dual clutch transmissions to its smallest and most affordable cars
Ford improved fleet-wide fuel economy and reduced CO2 emissions more than any
other automaker in the last five years

DETROIT, Jan. 8, 2010 – Ford Motor Company will introduce nine new or upgraded engines and six new transmissions in North America in 2010 as part of a five-year effort to overhaul its entire global powertrain portfolio.

The push began in 2008 and continues through 2013 and includes 60 new or significantly upgraded engines, transmissions and transaxles globally over the five year period.

One of the advanced and fuel-efficient North American powertrains is the 2012 Ford Focus’ all-new normally aspirated 2.0-liter direct fuel injection engine, the first of its kind in a Ford vehicle in North America.

“Ford is delivering on our commitment to lower emissions, improve fuel economy and deliver the highest quality powertrains in the industry,” said Barb Samardzich, Ford vice president, Powertrain Engineering. “We are making this happen with one of the most ambitious powertrain upgrades ever undertaken by Ford. By the end of 2010, nearly all of Ford’s North American engines will have been upgraded or replaced since 2008.”

North American launches
In 2010, Ford will launch new engines and transmissions in Fiesta, Mustang, Super Duty and F-150. These new powertrains are expected to propel each vehicle to best-in-segment in fuel economy.

Fiesta’s Ti-VCT 1.6-liter engine and PowerShift dual clutch transmission will deliver an estimated 40 mpg on the highway, topping both Honda Fit and Toyota Yaris.

Mustang’s new Ti-VCT 305-horsepower, 3.7-liter V-6 delivers the class-leading performance and fuel economy Mustang buyers expect. The 2011 Mustang V-6 with six-speed automatic will deliver at least 30 mpg on the highway. No other V-6 powered sports coupe in the world delivers this level of performance and fuel economy, regardless of price.

Mustang GT gets a new 5.0-liter V-8 that cranks out a 412 total horsepower and 390 ft.-lb. of torque yet delivers at least 25 mpg on the highway – better than any competitor.

Both versions of the Mustang get all new fuel-saving manual and automatic six-speed transmissions.

Spring also marks the arrival of an all-new Ford-designed-and-built Super Duty diesel truck engine. The 6.7-liter Power Stroke® V-8 turbocharged diesel powerhouse is expected to lead the class in fuel economy towing, hauling, horsepower and torque.

With its advanced emissions systems, the new 6.7-liter diesel engine also will run cleaner than the outgoing model. The 2011 Super Duty also gets a new 6.2-liter gasoline engine.

Even as they concentrate on improving powertrain performance, Ford engineers continue to reduce engine and transmission weight. For example, the new Super Duty diesel and transmission together are185 pounds lighter than the outgoing powertrain.

With its novel features such as a “live drive” Power Take Off (PTO) and rugged TorqShift six-speed automatic transmission, Super Duty will remain the most capable workhorse in the segment.

Ford: Driving powertrain innovations into the market
Other new Ford powertrains coming in 2010 include an EcoBoost 3.5-liter V-6 for the F-150. The EcoBoost 3.5-liter twin-turbocharged engine delivers the thrust and performance feel of a V-8, with the fuel efficiency of a V-6. Current EcoBoost-equipped models are delivering up to a 20 percent improvement in fuel economy and a 15 percent reduction in CO2 emissions versus larger-displacement engines.

By 2013, Ford plans to offer EcoBoost engines on 90 percent of its product lineup with annual volume of vehicles with EcoBoost at 1.3 million globally.

Toward the end of the year, a new 2.0-liter Ti-VCT four-cylinder for the next-generation Focus will mark the first introduction of a normally aspirated direct injection engine to the powertrain lineup. The all new engine will launch on the 2012 Focus in North America.

Ford: America’s fuel economy leader
No automaker has posted a larger fleet-wide gain in fuel economy in the past five years. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Ford’s combined car and truck fuel economy has improved nearly 20 percent since 2004 – almost double the next closest competitor.

Additionally, Ford’s tailpipe CO2 emissions are declining. Ford’s 2009 fleet-wide average is down approximately 9 percent from 2008.

“We are focused on sustainable technology solutions that can be used not for hundreds or thousands of cars, but for millions of cars, because that’s how Ford will truly make a difference,” said Samardzich.

– By: Kap Shah

January 8, 2010

Transplantation, Life Sciences, tissue engineering

Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:

A biomedical startup in San Diego is giving new form to tissue engineering, with the help of proprietary technology licensed from the University of Missouri and a 3-D “bio-printer” capable of building human blood vessels and organs.

Organovo CEO Keith Murphy demonstrated the bio-printer for me several weeks ago, explaining that the technology was developed by Gabor Forgacs, a professor of biological physics at the University of Missouri. “The technology really sparked the germ of the company,” says Murphy, who previously spent 10 years at Thousand Oaks, CA-based Amgen.

Forgacs, a Hungarian who moved to the United States in the 1980s, founded Organovo in 2007 with more than $1 million in funding raised from angel investors in San Diego and elsewhere around the world, according to Murphy. The CEO says Forgacs gained a fundamental understanding of what it takes to artificially create human organs through painstaking studies of developing chicken embryos. As Murphy puts it, Forgacs literally wrote (or co-authored) the textbook, which is called “Biological Physics of the Developing Embryo.”

The field of tissue engineering has come a long way since the 1980s, when MIT’s Robert Langer developed methods of encouraging certain types of organ cells to grow on polymer scaffolding. In recent years, a number of researchers have begun experimenting with technology that uses modified inkjet printers to lay down precise patterns of cells that grow together to form tissue. Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, demonstrated how researchers at Wake Forest use similar technology to grow a human ear, bladder, and heart muscle during a Ted Med presentation in San Diego three months ago.

Early demonstration of organ bio-printing

Forgacs showed in 2005 that it was possible to “print” a tube of living tissue, using droplets—or spheres—of viscous biological material from hamster ovary cells. When the cell spheres were printed in a ring and stacked on top of one another with the help of a supportive hydrogel, they fused together within 24 hours to form a tubular structure. Forgacs refined the technology under a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation that includes regenerative medicine scientists from Medical University of South Carolina, the New York Medical College, University of Utah, and other institutions. As Organovo’s Murphy puts it, the technology “really is about seeing this cellular self-assembly that occurs when these cells are put together. They already know how to behave and they just fuse together.”

Murphy says the startup moved to San Diego in late 2008 with a long-term goal of using the technology to create livers, kidneys, and other vital organs that are usually in short supply for patients in need of organ transplants. In the meantime, Organovo is expected to raise Series A venture funding sometime this summer. Murphy also says, “We’ve got to take the first steps to have commercially viable products in the short term.”

For the immediate future, Murphy says …Next Page »

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