Silicon TV tuner supplier Microtune expects to reap no “meaningful revenue” from DTV converter box sales after the first of the year, Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey Kupp said Tuesday at the Sidoti & Co. investor conference in New York. While the industry is on track to hit sales of 30 million converter boxes by February, any market beyond then will be slow to emerge, if it does at all, Kupp told us.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- The technology is ready for smart radios to prevent interference by portable devices for wireless broadband, and in a few years a second phase of the DTV transition should get TV off the air, speakers said Tuesday at a conference held by the New America Foundation and Google at the company’s headquarters.
Akamai is entering the behavioral targeting business, though the company told us it’s just “augmenting” its core services. It will acquire Acerno, a “unique online cooperative of shopping and purchase data” that will enable better online advertising, the companies said Tuesday. Acerno, founded in 2004, sold for $95 million cash. Some leading Internet retailers contribute anonymous data to aid Acerno’s “predictive models” of what consumers will buy online, Acerno said. The acquisition complements Akamai’s new Advertising Decisions Solutions, in development for two years, which pairs real-time anonymous Web browsing behavior with anonymous online purchasing data from advertisers’ sites, Akamai said. As other companies in behavioral targeting have done amid scrutiny by Capitol Hill, the FTC and consumer advocates, Akamai emphasized targeting’s consumer benefits. “Consumers, often faced with irrelevant online advertising clutter, will enjoy greater advertising relevance and continued growth in the amount of content that is available for free because it is supported by advertising,” it said. Akamai and Acerno belong to the Network Advertising Initiative, the self-regulatory body and clearinghouse for opt-out requests to members, they said. Their services “rely solely on anonymous and non-personally identifiable end user information,” the companies said. Akamai expects to close the acquisition “later this quarter,” the company said. Akamai started building the “underlying functionality” of behavioral targeting in response to demand from existing online advertising customers, said Liz Greene, product manager for the new business. The company doesn’t want to be an “ad network per se,” she said, since it already provides services to a “majority” of ad networks. Akamai will bring together the “subsets” of the targeting market to offer a service that “scales really well” so advertisers can make a large buy across several platforms, Greene said. Aaron Ahola, chief privacy officer, said Akamai’s new business is at the “opposite end” of the deep-packet inspection used by NebuAd to target ads for ISP customers. “It’s not like we're out there choosing ourselves what type of traffic patterns or Internet usage to monitor,” the behavior that landed NebuAd in a harsh Hill spotlight, Ahola said. The cookie-based tracking will operate under the opt- out system at the NAI, which Akamai joined this summer after the targeting platform concluded testing, he added. Recent congressional scrutiny of targeting didn’t influence the service launch’s timing, though Akamai waited until it had an agreement with Acerno for a formal launch of the new business, Ahola said. He now will “actively monitor” congressional activity on privacy and online ads, Ahola said. “We are anxious to see how Congress interprets a lot of the hearings and information gathering” that happened in the summer and fall.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- The technology is ready for smart radios to prevent interference by portable devices for wireless broadband, and in a few years a second phase of the DTV transition should get TV off the air, speakers said Tuesday at a conference held by the New America Foundation and Google at the company’s headquarters.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- The technology is ready for smart radios to prevent interference by portable devices for wireless broadband, and in a few years a second phase of the DTV transition should get TV off the air, speakers said Tuesday at a conference held by the New America Foundation and Google at the company’s headquarters.
Akamai is entering the behavioral targeting business, though the company told us it’s just “augmenting” its core services. It will acquire Acerno, a “unique online cooperative of shopping and purchase data” that will enable better online advertising, the companies said Tuesday. Acerno, founded in 2004, sold for $95 million cash. Some leading Internet retailers contribute anonymous data to aid Acerno’s “predictive models” of what consumers will buy online, Acerno said. The acquisition complements Akamai’s new Advertising Decisions Solutions, in development for two years, which pairs real-time anonymous Web browsing behavior with anonymous online purchasing data from advertisers’ sites, Akamai said. As other companies in behavioral targeting have done amid scrutiny by Capitol Hill, the FTC and consumer advocates, Akamai emphasized targeting’s consumer benefits. “Consumers, often faced with irrelevant online advertising clutter, will enjoy greater advertising relevance and continued growth in the amount of content that is available for free because it is supported by advertising,” it said. Akamai and Acerno belong to the Network Advertising Initiative, the self-regulatory body and clearinghouse for opt-out requests to members, they said. Their services “rely solely on anonymous and non-personally identifiable end user information,” the companies said. Akamai expects to close the acquisition “later this quarter,” the company said. Akamai started building the “underlying functionality” of behavioral targeting in response to demand from existing online advertising customers, said Liz Greene, product manager for the new business. The company doesn’t want to be an “ad network per se,” she said, since it already provides services to a “majority” of ad networks. Akamai will bring together the “subsets” of the targeting market to offer a service that “scales really well” so advertisers can make a large buy across several platforms, Greene said. Aaron Ahola, chief privacy officer, said Akamai’s new business is at the “opposite end” of the deep-packet inspection used by NebuAd to target ads for ISP customers. “It’s not like we're out there choosing ourselves what type of traffic patterns or Internet usage to monitor,” the behavior that landed NebuAd in a harsh Hill spotlight, Ahola said. The cookie-based tracking will operate under the opt- out system at the NAI, which Akamai joined this summer after the targeting platform concluded testing, he added. Recent congressional scrutiny of targeting didn’t influence the service launch’s timing, though Akamai waited until it had an agreement with Acerno for a formal launch of the new business, Ahola said. He now will “actively monitor” congressional activity on privacy and online ads, Ahola said. “We are anxious to see how Congress interprets a lot of the hearings and information gathering” that happened in the summer and fall.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- The technology is ready for smart radios to prevent interference by portable devices for wireless broadband, and in a few years a second phase of the DTV transition should get TV off the air, speakers said Tuesday at a conference held by the New America Foundation and Google at the company’s headquarters.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission will hold a conference call on October 20, 2008 to discuss its proposed rule on labeling requirements for toy and game advertising. The call is intended to inform the public about the details of the proposed rule and give interested stakeholders the opportunity to raise questions and share concerns about the rulemaking. (CPSC Public Calendar, dated 10/15/08, available at http://www.cpsc.gov/calendar.html.)
Unwary Internet users who click on phishing links could, if they're lucky, find themselves at an education landing page created by the Anti-Phishing Working Group and Carnegie Mellon University’s Supporting Trust Decisions Project. The working group is encouraging phishing-takedown providers, victimized brand holders and ISPs to use the education landing page when removing a phishing site rather than removing all traces of the site, resulting in a “page not found” message. “We are excited about the opportunity to educate consumers as they are falling victim to a phishing site,” said Laura Mather, managing director of operational policy for the working group. The program is based on a Bank of America effort begun in 2007. It’s based on the idea that people more readily accept information about phishing when they've just dodged a brush with a phisher. “Nobody wants to spend their time taking on-line safety courses,” said Ponnurangam Kumaraguru of Carnegie Mellon. “But we've demonstrated that users are receptive to on-line safety instruction immediately after they fall for a phishing attack and they tend to remember this instruction.”
Globalstar said it’s now offering remote utility meter reading via satellite. The service typically targets areas not served by land lines, it said. Officials said the service was made possible by the creation of a standardized meter reading interface, after Globalstar was approached by several utilities about providing such a service.