Veoh, the "revolutionary online video service that gives users the power to easily discover, watch, and personalize their entertainment viewing experience," has announced today that they will be laying off most of their staff as they head in Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the upcoming months.

The site has yet to find a business model that has worked, and has used all $70 million they received in funding from venture capitalists and large investors such as Time Warner and Goldman Sachs.

CEO and Founder Dmitry Shapiro has been actively looking to sell the company, but Veoh had been embroiled in a lawsuit over copyright with Universal Music Group which had all but killed a possible sale. The funny part was that they won the lawsuit, which ruled the site was protected under the DMCA.

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Google has announced the acquisition of Aardvark, the Internet search and social networking started by former Google employees. Neither company would release the financials of the deal, but it appears to be at least $50 million.

The move should help Google compete better with Twitter, and the move comes just one day after Buzz was released, adding social networking features to Google Gmail accounts.

Reuters says Aardvark "has pioneered a new type of Internet search dubbed "social search." Instead of looking at Web pages to find answers to search queries, Aardvark's service taps a person's network of social contacts."

The acquisition is Google's sixth purchase since September, but one of its smallest.

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Take a look at Square, the possible future of mobile payments.

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The Financial Times is reporting today that Apple has negotiated with content providers to sell standard definition TV shows for $1 an episode, 50 percent cheaper than usual, when the iPad launches.

High definition media will likely remain the same price, although that is still unclear.

It is also unclear what shows will cost $1, and how widespread the availability of the episodes are.

Additionally, the same report is saying that Apple has so far not given up on the idea of an iTunes subscription model, which would cost $30-a-month for unlimited TV episodes.

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OpenOffice.org, the powerful, free productivity suite, has updated today to version 3.2, adding a plethora of new features, and fixes.

Although I will not go into all the new features, OpenOffice has a bountiful page with all the updates. You can view that here: OpenOffice.org 3.2 New Features.

To download OpenOffice for the first time, or to update, please download it here: OpenOffice.org v3.2.0 at AfterDawn

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The video game rental service GameFly has filed an IPO today, becoming a publicly traded company and raising $50 million USD. The company will trade on the NASDAQ under the ticker GFLY.

The company has 334,000 subscribers and had revenue of $46.4 million for the six months ended September 30th, 2009. Net profit was $3 million, a drop year-on-year.

Additionally, GameFly is also in control of a network of gaming-related sites that bring in about 4.4 million unique users per month.

The company says it will use the IPO money for future growth.

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Sony has revealed the company's first two 3D Blu-ray players today, the BDP-S470 and S570 which will be available within a month, and will retail for the relatively cheap $200 USD and $250 USD, respectively.

Both players can be controlled via an iPhone or iPod Touch with a new BD Remote App, which will also show off more content related to the movie right from the device.

The more expensive device has Wi-Fi built-in while the cheaper player has a Wi-Fi dongle available separately.

Full specs:

BDP-S570 Blu-ray Disc Player

Available in February for about $250

* Full HD 1080p single-disc Blu-ray Disc, DVD, CD, SA-CD player
* Blu-ray 3D ready (with firmware update available this summer)
* BRAVIA Monolithic Design
* BRAVIA Internet Video and BD-LIVE™
* IP Content Noise Reduction
* Built-in Wi-Fi® Wireless (802.11) with Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS)
* Entertainment Database Browser with Gracenote technology
* BD Remote (iPhone/iPod touch remote control – free app.)
* Photo/music/video playback via USB and DLNA® (with firmware update)
* DVD upscaling to 1080p with Precision Cinema HD Upscaling
* Dolby® TrueHD and dts®-HD Master Audio™ decoding
* Built-in 1GB Memory



BDP-S470 Blu-ray Disc Player

Available in February for about $200

* Full HD 1080p single-disc Blu-ray Disc, DVD, CD, SA-CD player
* Blu-ray 3D ready (with firmware update available this summer)
* BRAVIA Monolithic Design
* BRAVIA Internet Video and BD-LIVE
* Wireless LAN Ready (USB wireless LAN adapter sold separately)
* Entertainment Database Browser with Gracenote technology
* BD Remote (iPhone/iPod touch remote control – free app.)
* Photo/music/video playback via USB and DLNA (with firmware update)
* DVD upscaling to 1080p with Precision Cinema HD Upscaling
* Dolby TrueHD and dts-HD Master Audio decoding

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Facebook has announced that Facebook Chat is now available through multiple IM clients, allowing you to chat with Facebook friends without needing to open the site in your browser.

Says the blog post:

We believe you should be able to connect with your Facebook friends everywhere. We're happy to announce that now you can with Facebook Chat. Starting today, the more than two billion chat messages sent on the site every day can be sent from your favorite desktop instant messaging client.

By integrating Facebook Chat with your preferred instant messenger, you'll never miss a message when you have to navigate away from Facebook and you'll be in control of how and where you chat with your Facebook friends. Simply connect your Facebook account with the instant messaging client of your choice and start chatting. You will not need to stay logged in to Facebook.com to continue to access your Facebook friends.

If you don't want all of your online friends to appear, you can adjust which Friend Lists show up in chat by adjusting them on Facebook. To go offline, you can either close your instant messaging client or click "go offline" in your Facebook Chat options. As always, your conversations will remain completely private and only between you and your Facebook friends.
Adjusting Friend Lists that appear in Chat.

To make Facebook Chat available everywhere, we are using the technology Jabber (XMPP), an open messaging protocol supported by most instant messaging software, including iChat, Pidgin, Adium, Miranda and more.

We've also built support for Facebook Chat into Facebook Connect for developers wishing to build chat experiences into their website, desktop or mobile instant-messaging applications and services. If you already have an AOL Instant Messenger account, you can check this out by connecting your Facebook Chat using the latest version of AIM.

To get started chatting, please visit the Facebook Chat section of the site tour for instructions on how to connect and for examples of instant messaging clients you can connect with. We hope you enjoy chatting with your friends wherever you go.

I can confirm this works as I have connected to Facebook Chat through my Trillian Astra client.

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Sony's John Koller has confirmed today that the PlayStation 3 will be receiving 3D support over the summer, via multiple firmware updates.

Says Koller, via Pocket-Lint: "3D is a major part of our initiatives in 2010 and we're currently developing 3D stereoscopic games to come in conjunction with the launch of Sony's 3D compatible BRAVIA LCD TV in summer 2010. The amazing thing about the PS3's technology is that all PS3 units that exist in homes and markets will be able to play 3D stereoscopic games as well as 3D BD movies through separate firmware upgrades - something that other platforms are unable to do. We'll be announcing actual game titles separately later, but we think that 3D stereoscopic gaming has a ton of potential, particularly in placing consumers within the actual experience."

3D Blu-ray support will likely be activated first, with 3D gaming made available through the second update. The releases coincide with the release of Sony Bravia 3D HDTVs.

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Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr recently told analysts the company will not be entering into any new licensing deals for ad-supported music.

"Free streaming services are clearly not net positive for the industry, and as far as Warner Music is concerned will not be licensed." said Bronfman during a conference call. He indicated that giving away music with the goal of enticing customers to pay was a losing business strategy.

Bronfman cited the growth of subscription-based services offered by mobile phone providers as the way of the future. These involve device-dependent, DRM-laden files which require a monthly subscription just so music you've already downloaded will continue to play.

The problem is an apparent lack of recognition by Bronfman of how his company grew to the size it is today. Record labels have always used free music to drive sales. The best known of these free services is terrestrial radio.

Non-traditional revenue

Meanwhile Warner Music is increasing emphasis on so-called 360 deals. These arrangements, also known as Expanded Rights deals, provide the label with additional revenue streams in the form of merchandise and concert revenues.

Last quarter these non-traditional revenue streams accounted for 10% of WMG's income.

There is some irony in the fact that they're finally starting to take advantage of these opportunities at the same time they're attempting to squeeze free music out of existence. After all they're exactly the sort of thing you need to make money from giving away music.

In fact it's fair to say that reducing the amount of free music available also limits the value of 360 deals. Merchandising and concert attendance both rely heavily on getting as much music as possible to the most ears available.

Bronfman also made reference to "the growing recognition of the value of intellectual property." That begs the question of whether he even understands what the term 'value' actually means.

Despite many content owners' fantasies to the contrary, value is what the customer is willing to pay. No matter what Warner raises the price to, the value will be decided by their customers.

In fact Bronfman himself admitted that sales dropped as a result of iTunes' recently implemented tiered pricing model. Despite sales of popular tracks slowing when the price jumped from $0.99 to $1.29, he characterized it as a "net positive" because the price increase offset lower unit sales.

What it really means is that individual iTunes downloads have a lower value than Warner (and other label) executives want to admit.

Meanwhile recent research suggests lower prices would result in more units sold and higher revenue. In other words it would mean more profit from both traditional and non-traditional services.

The bottom line is you can't expect to get paid every time someone consumers your content. That's the losing business strategy.

It's also the direction every major label continues to charge blindly, under the mistaken belief that consumers will eventually see the light and follow like lemmings off a cliff.

The reality is consumers long ago took the lead when the labels refused to. Record labels can follow and profit or ignore them and face continued decline.

Music doesn't become free because label executives are magnanimous and charitable. It becomes free because it has a higher value as a promotional tool than a commodity.

Conveniently, that mirrors the cost to labels for reproducing all that music digitally. So the real question is how can you take advantage of free music to sell other products.

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According to a new blog post, Twitter is set to begin using BitTorrent on the backend as a way to more efficiently deploy files.

Reads the post:

Anyone who has the battle scars that come from managing a large operational set of computers, like a large popular web site, knows all too well the challenge of deploying a new image site-wide. Often times, this needs to happen fast (think emergency patch) and as with so many other applications on the network, the traditional client-server model breaks down at scale in the face of this challenge.

But now there is an interesting open source project from Twitter that might bring some relief to this particular problem. The project uses BitTorrent technology and is called Murder (per the project page, a "murder" allegedly describes a flock of crows, not some lesser crime than the accusations too-often leveled against the hard-working engineers at BitTorrent, Inc). The distributed nature of BitTorrent means an operation that once took many dozens of minutes, now happens in less than a dozen seconds. These efficiencies will reduce maintenance windows, site downtime and exposure to security vulnerabilities.

The folks at Twitter will be disclosing more about the project and the performance of this solution in the coming weeks. We are thrilled to collaborate with them on this and hope that more Web Monsters out there look to this and other applications of BitTorrent in solving some of the hard problems of the Internet.

View "Murder" here: http://github.com/lg/murder

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