Todays Takeover Rumor Bought to You By Google And Sirius

The Motley Fool is running a story on a rumor that Google is considering a takeover offer for US Satellite Radio provider Sirius.

The merger between Sirius and XM has yet to be approved by Federal Regulators and hence Sirius would become a takeover target if the merger failed. Google is still seeking more inventory for its Adsense for Radio program; hence buying Sirius would provide it with its own radio network from which they could sell advertising.

It would be easy to dismiss the rumor as being fanciful, and many already have, however any serious Google watcher knows that Google’s ambitions seem to have very little or no bounds. The advantages of Google acquiring Sirius from an advertising view point are obvious, and Sirius also streams a portion of its content over the web as well; a service that would bring Google into internet radio broadcasting. However, there is one additional factor that isn’t being discussed much: Sirius’ Loral FS1300 satellites.

Sirius’ current three elliptical orbiting Loral FS1300 satellites are being primarily used for streaming the Sirius Radio service, but are planned to be used for streaming television as well. More importantly: they can push data two ways; the Loral FS1300 satellite being used by may other companies for that very purpose. In buying Sirius, Google would own 3 orbiting satellites (with one spare and one being built) which they could use to provide internet access or a related data service to the United States and Canada. Google + Sirius would equal Google being everywhere over the largest market in the world. Capacity may dictate a non-universal use for the satellites (such as providing an ISP service), but they could work for an in-car internet service or similar mobile function. Bringing highspeed, low cost internet access to the car has long been dreamed about, Google could be planning to do just that.

Slide Users Adding One Million New Widgets Daily: That’s a Lot Of Widgets

San Francisco based social network widget provider Slide has hit new highs, with reports that they are now serving over one million new widgets daily.

Slide provides widget based photo slideshows that users can embed in a range of social networking sites including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and Friendster.

Slide has impeccable backing, being founded by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin and funded by Mayfield Fund, Khosla Ventures, BlueRun Ventures and Founders Fund with a rumored round of $20million in November 2006.

Slide’s Facebook apps alone have a combined usage number in excess of 10 million users. comScore reports that Slide was serving 117 million unique visitors a month as of April 2007.

Slide competes directly with services including RockYou, Flektor, and Photobucket.

Most Useful iPhone Site Yet: Meebo

Facebook may have the best looking iPhone site to date, but Meebo for the iPhone is more useful, as it brings instant messaging, finally, to that phone. ICQ, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and Jabber/Google are supported.

Meebo took its time building the site, which is actually their first mobile application. There is no special URL, just go to meebo.com from an iPhone and the browser will load the correct code.

The application scales either way you hold the phone (I recommend vertically to see contact, horizontally to chat - see pictures). All of your settings from Meebo are retained on the iPhone, including any avatar you’ve created. And people who you’ve had recent conversations with are always listed on the top of your buddy list.

I have a couple of complaints with Meebo. First, you still can’t access Skype text chat - a limitation of Skype, not Meebo. Also, if you leave the browser to take a call, send a text message, whatever, you are auto-logged off of Meebo and IM. This is an iPhone limitation and underscores the need for real IM chat software for the iPhone. Adium is what I use on my desktop Mac. Hopefully we’ll someday see something similar for the phone, too.

We previously covered FlickIM, which has a very nice AIM-only chat app for the iPhone. Mundu and eBuddy also have their own iPhone products as well. Mundu works well, although they may charge for it at some point; eBuddy only connects with MSN, Yahoo, and AIM.

PubSub: They’re Baaaaack

PubSub is certainly more well known for its self-induced implosion last year than for the product itself. The company developed what they called a “future search engine” that allowed users to type in keywords and get blog and other RSS-enabled news back as it was published.

It was a good idea, and one emulated by most of the blog search engines over time. But the company’s founders, Bob Wyman and Salim Ismail, never got along and their private disputes eventually turned very public. Ismail left the company after a power struggle, a merger with KnowNow fell apart and the company shut down. Even after that, Wyman kept swiping at Ismail on his blog.

Today, Ismail and Wyman have moved on. Ismail heads up Yahoo Brickhouse, a new semi-autonomous business unit to foster new product development within Yahoo. Wyman works for Google on an internal project known, intriguingly, as PubSub as well.

I thought we’d heard the last of PubSub. But today Ian Bell emailed to say that the company is in the process of relaunching - and sure enough a new home page is up. Bell says that PubSub’s investors, who took over the company after a controversial recapitalization which left some of the minority stockholders steaming, have sold most of the assets to his startup, along with $1 million in fresh capital. He’s now in charge of PubSub.

Bell says they’ll relaunch PubSub in six months or so as a “consumer friendly version of Yahoo Pipes.” Since he won’t say any more right now, we’re left speculating exactly what that will be and how PubSub’s technology fits into it. In the meantime, he says, they’ll be launching a Facebook application in the next month that directly uses PubSub’s matching engine. You tell the application what you like and it will deliver relevant news and information to you on the subject.

Just Don’t Look Under The Carpet

All of the bad blood created with the original PubSub saga hasn’t completely settled yet. The minority shareholders, we hear, are very upset about the way Polygon Capital handled the KnowNow merger discussions and eventual winding down of the company. In the end, Polygon and their associates supposedly owned all of the assets of the company, leaving the founders and minority stockholders with nothing. Polygon never settled the matter with them, and there was little reason to sue given that the company was in limbo. But if the new PubSub is successful there could suddenly be a pot of money to go after, and that could spark new litigation interest from the old shareholders.

Whatever happens, the drama is likely to continue. And all that attention, Bell says, is “great PR” for his new startup.

Update: Bell says below that I misquote him slightly in the last paragraph above, which is highly likely given my poor listening skills. I take misquotes seriously because what really matters (usually) is what someone meant to say, not what they actually said. In this case, it may have been neither. Apologies.

Restrain Discipline on Partnered Lutheran Gay Clergy

Until August 11 of this year, gay clergy ordained within regular ecclesiastical channels of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) were expected to remain celibate, even if they were in long-term, committed relationships with their same-sex ...
Lutherans vote not to punish gay ministers Los Angeles Times
Gay Clergy OK'd By Evangelical Lutheran Church In America WBBM780
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (subscription) - Kansas City Star - WQAD - United Press International
all 136 news articles »


http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn

Fear of bloodbath thwarts efforts to rescue hostages

South Korean officials have twice blocked rescue missions to free 21 of their countrymen held by Taleban rebels amid concerns that Afghan military action could spark a bloodbath.
Release of South Korean hostages delayed RTE.ie
Two South Koreans 'to be freed' BBC News
The Australian - Daily News & Analysis - International Herald Tribune - INQ7.net
all 1,540 news articles »


http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&tab=wn

Happy Birthday, CrunchGear!

In honor of CrunchGear’s first birthday, the CG team is giving away over 30 prizes in the next 10 days, culminating in a get-together in Manhattan and maybe an iPhone or two. Head on over to check it out.

The Fascination With ToDo Lists Continues

The amount of energy web entrepreneurs put into creating the perfect online ToDo list is surprising. In May 2006 we ran through a boatload of them in a comparison post. After all that entrepreneurial effort, you’d think the online ToDo list would have been perfected.

Apparently not. Now DabbleDB, a beautiful little database-centric application builder based in Vancouver, Canada, has created a bit of buzz around its own ToDo list application, built on the Facebook platform.

The app, called Dabble Do, uses the DabbleDB back end to create a simple ToDo list on Facebook. There are some bells and whistles. For example, for dates you simply type in “tomorrow” or “next Wednesday” and the app figures out what you mean. You can also set ToDo items for your Facebook friends and follow up by “cracking a whip.” It’s a good way to stay organized.

Will Facebook’ers use this to keep themselves organized? The email/messaging feature on Facebook is very popular (I wish I could just have it forward to my normal email, though). Perhaps adding other features of Outlook, like ToDo lists and calendars, will catch on, too. In my mind, though, social networking is very different from office-like organization applications. That’s why I wasn’t particularly excited when Zoho (an office suite) added their own Facebook application a few weeks ago. So I’m fairly tepid on Dabble Do.

The bloggers seem to like it, though, and I’ve been wrong more than once before. See Mathew Ingram, Read/Write Web, Paul Kedrosky (an investor), Donna Bogatin and others. Ah, I love the blogosphere.