Mediagazer: Apple Rejects Sony's E-Reader Software Amid Concerns About Sales Erosion (Bloomberg)

7:45 AM ET, February 2, 2011

Top News:

Nicholas Carlson / SAI:

LEAKED: AOL's Master Plan — Two years into his tenure as AOL CEO, Tim Armstrong is stepping on the gas. — By April, he wants AOL editorial to increase its stories per month from 33,000 to 55,000. — He wants pageviews per story to jump from 1,500 to 7,000.

Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:

I Worked on the AOL Content Farm & It Changed My Life — Five years ago this week I began writing for AOL's blog network Weblogs Inc. I wrote 5 technology news stories each day and was paid a mere $5 per article. It was grueling, that was just one of 3 jobs I had at the time - and it was great.

Discussion: The Next Web, Future of Journalism and SAI

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

New York Times Staffers Using Apple iPhone 4 for Video News Gathering, “A Huge Game Changer” Says Paper's Video Chief — WASHINGTON, DC — The New York Times is providing reporters with the Apple iPhone 4 to record and upload videos via an Aspera App to the paper's server.

Dan Duray / New York Observer:

The End of Blogging … “I don't really see a blog business,” said Nick Denton over gchat. He still wasn't sold on the idea of an interview regarding his sites' redesign, scheduled to debut tomorrow, and seemed to be attempting an escape. “I should find you that old post …

Discussion: Future of Journalism, Poynter, Fimoculous, @mathewi, @fredwilson, @anildash, @chanders, @editorialiste and @mathewi

Ben Popper / New York Observer:

Nick Denton on Gawker Redesign: Only Facebook Matters — Gawker went live with its redesign on two of its web sites this morning, io9 and Jalopnik. — Interestingly, the Gawker redesign has stripped out Twitter and Stumble Upon—which used to sit next to each article …

Discussion: The Next Web, The Social, SAI, New York Observer, The Wire, Runnin' Scared and Village Voice

Ray Wert / Jalopnik:
Welcome to the new Jalopnik 5.0! — You'll notice Jalopnik's …

Discussion: Boing Boing, Gawker.TV, @antderosa and @raywert

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

Exclusive: An Early Look At News.me, The New York Times' Answer To The Daily — Tomorrow, all eyes will be on the launch of News Corp's iPad newspaper The Daily, but huddled away in a downtown loft in New York City's meatpacking district a team from betaworks and the New York Times …

Discussion: Guardian, MacStories, IntoMobile, Electronista and Gizmodo, more at Techmeme »

Bloomberg:

Apple Rejects Sony's E-Reader Software Amid Concerns About Sales Erosion — Apple Inc. rejected a proposed digital-book application by Sony Corp. amid concerns that the software's payment-handling system would erode Apple's sales. — Sony's e-reader application wasn't allowed …

Discussion: thebookseller.com/news …

New York Times:
Apple Moves to Tighten Control of App Store

Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Apple responds: we want a cut of Amazon, Sony e-book sales

Discussion: Kindle Review, eBookNewser and TeleRead

Ingrid Lunden / mocoNews:
Bad News For The Digital Newsstand: Apple Rejects Sony Reader App

Discussion: paidContent, MacStories, SAI and Technologizer

Damon Kiesow / Poynter:

The Daily staffers we identified came from NY Post, AP, The Atlantic, AOL News, national media companies — The staff of The Daily — Rupert Murdoch's new iPad newspaper that launches tomorrow — bring a wide range of print, online and broadcast experience, mostly at national media outlets …

Discussion: Fortune, @pkafka, MediaPost and @romenesko

Chris Rovzar / New York Magazine: The Daily Columnists Will Include Dan Wolken, Soo Yoon, and Jessica Valenti

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:
Rupert Murdoch Gives Guests a Sneak Peek of Tomorrow's “Daily” …

Discussion: Newsonomics, Poynter, Sky News, CNN, The Wrap, Yahoo! News, TelecomTV, Faster Forward, MacStories, App Advice, VentureBeat, Apple, NYConvergence.com, Fox News and New York Observer

Andrew Wallenstein / paidContent:

Comcast, Time Warner Expand TV Everywhere — It's been approximately 18 months since Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) first talked up TV Everywhere, but their authentication strategy has finally come to pass: a multi-year commitment to put hundreds of hours …

Discussion: Company Town, Multichannel and Future of Journalism

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Two Hints at Stepped-Up Media Rivalry in Online Streaming — The increasing importance of Internet rights for television channels and shows has been vividly demonstrated twice in the last few days. — Comcast and Time Warner announced an unusually comprehensive pact on Tuesday that covers …

Discussion: Company Town, Ars Technica and Technologizer, more at Techmeme »

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Al Jazeera Finds New Paths In U.S. — New ways to watch Al Jazeera English in the United States keep popping up — but not on cable or satellite systems. — On Monday, YouTube started promoting a live stream of the channel, supplementing the channel's own Web stream.

Discussion: Poynter, B&C, ReadWriteWeb, Market Wire, Technologizer, Stop Big Media News and LA Observed

Steve Safran / Lost Remote:
Al Jazeera now streaming on TV in U.S. via Roku

Discussion: Tom Watson, Technologizer and Yahoo! News

Matea Gold / Los Angeles Times:
Through Egypt, Al Jazeera English has an American moment

Discussion: Al Jazeera Blogs, Political Punch, Wall Street Journal, Hot Air, ArtsBeat, On Media's Blog, The Atlantic Online, New York Post, War in Context, New York Times, NPR, Media Decoder and ReadWriteWeb

Kat Stoeffel / New York Observer:

The Power Booker: Katie Thomson Is Piers Morgan's New Fixer — When The Observer met Katie Thomson at Landmarc restaurant in Columbus Circle, we wanted to congratulate her. We were beaten to it. — “Monica Lewinsky sent a note saying congratulations,” she said.

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

AOL Sells Content Recommender Surphace to Content Recommender Outbrain — Tim Armstrong has disposed of another asset that AOL bought before he showed up: The company has sold Surphace, its content recommendation engine, to Outbrain, which does the same thing.

Discussion: Future of Journalism, paidContent and SAI, more at Techmeme »

New York Times:

A Hacking Case Becomes a War of the Tabloids — LONDON — It was a classic tabloid scoop: a young woman's account of a two-year affair with the actor Ralph Fiennes, spiced up with racy details of what he liked to do and how he liked to do it. Three newspapers — The Sunday Mirror …

Discussion: Guardian

Robinsloan / Twitter Media:

Tracking Egypt with Tweets on TV — If you've been following the news from Egypt on TV, chances are good you've seen some Tweets on air. If you haven't, here's a quick sampling of segments to give you a sense of how Twitter is being used to tell the story.

Discussion: Piers Morgan

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Time Warner Cable Buys Enterprise Hosting And Cloud Services Company NaviSite For $230M — Time Warner Cable has just announced that it has acquired NaviSite, a provider of enterprise-class hosting, managed application, messaging and cloud services, for $5.50 per share in cash, or $230 million.

Discussion: Business Wire, Multichannel and All Things Digital

Robinsloan / Twitter Media:

The Game wins at Twitter — Behold, the stirring saga of The Game, as chronicled by the Hollywood Reporter: — This is a show that struggled on the CW for three seasons before being cancelled. It spent more than a year in limbo, its fans clamoring for a comeback.

Discussion: GigaOM

Andrew Hampp / AdAge:

‘Angry Birds’ Flock to the Super Bowl — Secret Code for Popular Mobile Game to Be Embedded in 30-Second ‘Rio’ Spot — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The biggest craze in mobile games is coming to the biggest game on TV: 20th Century Fox is teaming up with Rovio's “Angry Birds” …

Discussion: MacStories, App Advice and Most Recent Home Page Posts …

Garrick Schmitt / AdAge:

How APIs Are Changing the Way Brands Connect With Consumers — Brands and Retailers Doing It Right? Best Buy, Sears, Etsy and North Face — What ever happened to the mashup? — It seems like it was only a few years ago that we were breathlessly talking about mashing up Flickr photos …

Jenna Wortham / New York Times:

Apps Alter Reading on the Web — The DVR rocked the world of television by letting viewers skip commercials and build their own home viewing schedules. Now a handful of Web services and applications are starting to do much the same thing to online publishers.

Discussion: Marco.org, GigaOM, Editors Weblog, The Next Web, NewsGrange and Anil Dash

Paul Bond / Hollywood Reporter:

Americans' Favorite Medium Is Television, According to Study … Seventy-one percent of Americans say television is one of their favorite forms of media, even as they consume it more and more on devices other than traditional TV sets, according to Deloitte's fifth annual “State of the Media Democracy” report due out Tuesday.

Discussion: Techland and Noted