The Murdoch empire continues to buy to part of the online world, as BSkyB announce the full purchase of Web publishing and design company, mykindaplace, a company that they’d invested in 2000 when they previously dabbled in buying bits of the Internet.
Founded in 1999, mykindaplace has a couple of publications aimed at teenagers, one for girls, and another boys, monkeyslum, that launched in September 2004. At the other extreme end of the age range, they also published livingit in January 2006 aimed at those 45+.
With the purchase of mykindaplace, Sky will also gain Burst Interactive, which currently handles the skyone.co.uk site for Sky.
James Baker, Managing Director of Sky Networked Media, who will have the mykindaplace teams under his power, invented a new term to us “super-serve,” when he said “Working even more closely with mykindaplace will allow us to accelerate the expansion of our web portfolio. We intend to super-serve audiences in key content genres and target new users with a suite of content-rich sites thatdeepen customer relationships and drive new revenue.”
Sky who already owned 49% of mykindaplace bought Eurovestech shareholding in Mykindaplace for £0.5 million cash back on 30 June. We understand that Eurovestech owned 5.6% which they bought into at the same time as Sky back in April 2000. At the time of going to press, it isn’t clear who owned the remaining shares, although it is understood that Freeserve invested in the company in 2000 as well.
In the largest UK study of its kind, the Mobile Life Report has revealed our attitudes towards mobile phones and how they have impacted on our lives, with more than 90% of UK mobile users saying they can’t get through the day without using their phone.
Lord knows why people bothered to answer these questions, but the survey found that a quarter of people bothered to disconnect their mobiles before indulging in a bit of hanky panky, with 11% switching them to silent (writer resists cheap joke about vibra-alerts) and 14% turning their phones off altogether.
After an eternity of denials, obfuscation, rumour and counter-rumour, Microsoft have finally confirmed that they will be launching their own rival to Apple’s iPod range.
Billboard Magazine, who broke the story, has speculated that the Zune-branded range of products will include music players, video players, WiFi-enabled devices and possibly even a portable video game device, with Microsoft incorporating social networking and mobile media purchasing.
Microsoft has already busied itself with the dreadfully punned 
Following the surprise resignation of SMG’s Chief executive Andrew Flanagan, the pieces are in place for consolidation of the Scottish and Ulster media outfits that provide the Celts with their ITV services.
With many predicting the imminent departure of Charles Allen, ITV, a shareholder in SMG has troubles enough of it’s own to be ruled out of a takeover.
Yahoo! and Motorola have cuddled up in their synergetic beds and fluffed up their co-branding pillows to announce a new deal that will see Yahoo! Go pre-installed on millions of Motorola handsets next year.
With two of the mobile phone big boys onboard, we reckon there’s been a fair amount of backside-kicking going on at arch-rivals Google, who must be well miffed to see Yahoo grab such a huge chunk of the market.
With more and more phones offering internet access, punters want to be able to easily access services, search the web and grab their mail on the move.
If you thought that YouTube was going to rule the roost forever in delivering videos over a Browser, think again.
Every two or three videos that you watch will trigger the showing of a video advert. They’re currently running at 30-seconds, and I’d imagine that they’ll stay at that or less. Anymore and people will see it too much as a barrier to seeing the content they want. Most of the ads I’ve seen today have been for the Library of Congress
It wasn’t that long ago that you’d be sure to garner approving nods from your fellow executives if you pulled out a pen that lit up when your mobile phone had a call coming in (yes! we had one too!).
If this multi-function pen has excited your wavelengths, be advised that it’s only available in limited quantities for a limited time only, so get your order in quick!
According to figures compiled by mmetrics.com, a research firm who strut around in the exciting world of mobile market measurement, when it comes to mobile phones there’s a hefty transatlantic gulf in smartphone tastes.
French say “Nous aimons Nokia”
“Ja ist Nokia gut,” say Germans
Americans go ape for Palm
There’s been tons of financial results coming out around now, but we’ve spared you from them – we’re nice like that. Today we felt it was worth an exception.
As is well known, one way Google does so well is by getting other sites (partners) to carry their clients advertising for them (of which Digital-lifestyles is one). In accounting-ese/jargon, they refer to it as Traffic Acquisition Costs or TAC. These increased to $785 million, up from $723 million in its first quarter. The TAC (see how quickly you can get into the swing of this jargon) remains at 32% of their advertising revenue, giving a rough understanding that Google take 68% of these ad earnings – pretty healthy in their favour.
One of the reasons I found myself being wooed over to the Windows Mobile dark side last year was after Palm unforgivably failed to deliver on their promise of Wi-Fi drivers for the Treo 650.
Although the lack of Wi-Fi remains a major disappointment on the Treo (it’s also noticeably absent from the latest Treo 700p, much to the consternation of their loyal user base), T-Mobile’s superb unlimited data Web’n’Walk deal more than makes up for it, offering unlimited GPRS data for just £7 a month.
Although onboard Wi-Fi appears to remains a distant dream for the Treo there is at least the option to use the Enfora Wi-Fi sled (review coming shortly).
There is, however, a way to access Skype on a Palm via a service called