Darren Straight’s Blog

MSN India, the leading online destination for Indians across the globe, today announced the appointment of Samir Saraiya as head of business development.

Saraiya will be reporting to MSN India & Windows Live country head Jaspreet Bindra.

According to Bindra in an official statement, “The Indian Internet market is flourishing and the growth that MSN India is experiencing reflects that. The appointment of Samir is part of our commitment to strengthen our pool of experience and expertise that MSN customers have come to expect.”

In this newly created role, Saraiya will be responsible for leveraging the strengths of MSN India and Windows Live to create new opportunities and relationships with businesses in the Indian market.

He has been with the internet industry for the past several years. The early dotcom wave saw him shifting to Mid-Day where he headed the group’s business development portfolio across its digital assets. He then joined the Indian media conglomerate, The Times of India Group, where he worked with the vice chairman’s office overseeing business strategy across the Group’s media properties, including Indiatimes, The Economic Times and Bombay Times.

In 2003, he moved to Yahoo! India where he was responsible for creating new revenue streams across both the internet and mobile divisions including launching Yahoo! India’s E-commerce initiative and its mobile adverting products, states the release.

Via: Indiana Television

MSN has announced this week that episodes of the Emmy award-winning comedy “Arrested Development” are already available to be streamed on demand on MSN^® Video and at no cost to viewers.

The first five episodes are available today at http://arresteddevelopment.msn.com and, starting Dec. 15, three new episodes will be added every three weeks. All 53 episodes from the three seasons of the show will be rolled out within the next year.

The “Arrested Development” episodes will be running with a new MSN Video player designed to create a better viewing experience of long-form video. The new playback experience will set the standard for future long-form content available on MSN Video, and will include added functionality. The player provides viewers with many options to return to an episode they were watching if there is an interruption by automatically finding the last position in the episode before the interruption, and also at any time allowing the user to jump back 15 seconds. In addition, viewers have the ability to send a link of their favorite moment within an episode to their friends. The player can also present the show in a larger “sit-back” view with great quality and will still allow viewers to see their task bar to keep an eye on e-mail and instant messages.

“We’re thrilled to present this critically acclaimed show to the MSN audience along with exclusive online content for the ultimate ‘Arrested Development’ fans,” said Rob Bennett, general manager of Entertainment and Video Services for MSN. “We’ve created a number of innovative new features to enhance the video experience for ‘Arrested Development,’ and will lead the industry in improving the overall experience for watching long-form video content online.”

Future additional content will include deleted scenes, blooper reels and related DVD content. Interactive features such as message boards, cast information, fan areas, blogging helpers, and subscription options for newsletters and RSS feeds will collectively provide a deeper community experience for fans of the show.

Produced by Twentieth Century Fox Television and Imagine Entertainment, the multiple-award-winning “Arrested Development” ran for three years on FOX and was one of the most celebrated comedies in the network’s history. It revolves around Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman), who is doing his best to pick up the pieces and keep his offbeat family from falling apart after his father, George Bluth (Jeffrey Tambor), is locked up for fraud.

“Arrested Development” content on MSN will be available at http://arresteddevelopment.msn.com. Currently this content is only available to U.S. viewers.

MSN has quietly re-launched its online radio service, backed by popular internet radio service, Pandora.com a music recommendation engine, which allows users to create custom radio stations and discover more artistes and songs, according to the users’ taste in music. Moreover, users who have already signed up with Pandora’s free internet radio, are now automatically on MSN Radio, along with the customized radio stations they created on Pandora.

The deal will give Pandora millions of new listeners, and it may give MSN Radio a much-needed boost in online radio to rival No. 1 Clear Channel and No. 2 Yahoo Launchcast. Because apart from Clear Channel, all of the major portals are losing ground in streaming radio to smaller outfits. What the MSN-Pandora deal shows is that they need to jazz up their services with music-discovery features or other tricks like social networking.

An MSN representative said that the Pandora deal is designed to improve MSN Radio with a free music recommendation engine. The service replaces the old free MSN Radio, as well as MSN’s former premium radio service. Listeners can still pay to get MSN Radio without ads.

Read more here.

In accordance with the March 2004 decision by the European Commission, Microsoft submitted 8,500 pages of detailed technical documentation in July 2006. The Commission has now completed its initial review of this extensive documentation. The documentation is now available for review by any potential licensees. Microsoft is committed to full compliance with the March 2004 decision.In the wake of the completion of the Commission’s initial review of Microsoft’s documentation, the company issued the following brief statement:

“This is another important step in the process. The Trustee and Microsoft have now completed the technical review and edits to the more than 100 documents, totalling 8,500 pages, that we submitted in July of this year, in accordance with the deadline established by the Commission. We are pleased that the Commission has recognized our efforts to comply with our documentation obligations, and we will continue to work closely with the Commission and the Trustee to ensure that we are in full compliance with every aspect of the Commission’s decision.

The submission of technical documentation in July, and the revision process since then, has been an unprecedented undertaking involving over 300 engineers and technical writers at Microsoft.

The Trustee’s team of 7 technical experts has worked tirelessly over the past four months to give us feedback on the enormous volume of technical documentation that we submitted in July, and we have incorporated their input into the documents.

The next phase in the process, established by the Commission, is that the documentation is now available for review by any potential licensee, and we look forward to receiving feedback from the industry.”

comScore Networks, a leader in measuring the digital age, has revealed the top U.K. Internet properties for October, based on data collected through its comScore World Metrix audience ratings service.  Google Sites (not including YouTube) edged out Microsoft Sites in October to become the most-visited Web property in the U.K. for the first time, followed by Microsoft Sites and eBay.

“We have watched the popularity of Google consistently grow over time,” said Bob Ivins, managing director of comScore Europe.  “While the current month-over-month increase was small, it was just enough to earn them the number one spot.”

Added Ivins: “Also notable was YouTube’s 24 percent increase in traffic in October.  YouTube’s ascent in popularity around the world and in the U.K., demonstrated by the site’s month-after-month double-digit percentage increases, has been remarkable.”

There are all kinds of ways that you can celebrate the launch of a new product: a gathering, cake, or even banners. But Microsoft and Dell recently partnered up to create a super-cool custom PC in celebration of Microsoft releasing Windows Vista to manufacturing earlier this month. Take a Look at the specs and tell me you don’t want one!

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 Processor
• 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX
• 4GB RAM Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM @ 667mhz
• 1Terabyte RAID0 SATA HDDs (2×500GB)
• 48x Combo + 16x DVD+/-RW Double Layer Burner
• Dual TV Tuners (Analog)
• Dell 30″ Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor
• Full 5.1 Surround Sound

This PC screams — it has a Windows Experience Index rating of 5.2!

Via: CyberNet

Alcatel, the French manufacturer of telecommunications gear, has filed two separate complaints against Microsoft in a Texas court, claiming that Microsoft has infringed on seven Alcatel patents. The court documents do not give examples of Microsoft’s alleged bad behavior, but we can get some idea of what’s at stake by looking at the cited patents.

The patents are 6,339,830; 6,874,090; and 6,661,799.

The first two relate to “Deterministic user authentication service for communication networks”, issued on the 15th of January 2002 and the 29th of March 2005, respectively. And the last is called “Method and Apparatus for Faciltating Peer-to-Peer Application Communication”, issued on the 9th of December 2003.

Alcatel alleges that Microsoft provides components from the US used overseas which infringe these patents, causing damage to Alcatel.

Alcatel has not revealed which Microsoft products it believes are in breach but says they relate to digital video and network communication which means it could be anything from Microsofts IPTV stack or the XBOX 360.

The company said in a statement that it has been in licensing talks with Microsoft, but that the talks had recently broken off. Alcatel is asking the judge for triple damages based on a claim of “willful infringement” by Microsoft. Microsoft has yet to file a response.

Via: The Inquirer | ARS Technica

By popular demand there will be a Christmas BritBlog blogmeet in London! It will be held on Saturday the 9th of December 2006 from about 2:30 PM, probably in a pub near Covent Garden. Possibly the same pub as the last London blogmeet I went to.

So hey if you are interested check out BritBlog for more information.

Anyone Interested in a UK Christmas Party 2006?

There’s no date set yet and we would need a venue, possible somewhere in London, but hey it’s just an idea!

Update (19/11/06): Checking out some sites to see what we could do:

• http://www.viewlondon.co.uk/index-xmas06.asp
• http://www.viewlondon.co.uk/details-xmas06-106.html
• http://www.eventwise.co.uk/asp/PartyType_002.asp
• http://www.venuereservations.co.uk/christmas-events.htm

Any ideas peeps?

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