Deal: 8 TV stations to sell for $1.1 billion by News Corp.

Tribune Co.'s new venture to spread the costs of some television operations across its 23 stations and those of Oak Hill Capital Partners' Local TV LLC will get to spread those costs over an even wider swath than first announced.
News Corp., the media company controlled by Rupert Murdoch, will sell eight of its Fox network-affiliated television stations in the U.S. to Oak Hill Capital Partners for about $1.1 billion in cash.
The sale in small markets will leave News Corp. with 27 stations in major markets including New York, Boston and Los Angeles.
The media conglomerate, which owns the New York Post, a controlling stake in BSkyB satellite TV service, and 20th Century Fox movie studio, recently closed a $5.6 billion deal to buy the Wall Street Journal publisher, Dow Jones.
The sale will probably be completed in the third quarter, News Corp. said in a statement Saturday. The purchase will help Oak Hill, the buyout firm founded two years ago by Robert Bass, a Texas oil billionaire, create a broader U.S. network. In May it paid $575 million to acquire stations in Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Arkansas from The New York Times Co.
"It is part of News Corp.'s strategic decision to shed low-growth, noncore assets," said Richard Dorfman, managing director of the investment firm Richard Alan.
For Oak Hill, the purchase is "a classic private equity play," Dorfman said. "Ad dollars are migrating to the Web, but it's a government-licensed franchise that can throw off good cash flow and reliably service debt."
Oak Hill will get WJW in Cleveland; KDVR in Denver; KTVI in St. Louis; WDAF in Kansas City, Missouri; WITI in Milwaukee; KSTU in Salt Lake City, Utah; WBRC in Birmingham, Alabama; and WGHP in Greensboro, North Carolina, according to the News Corp. statement confirmed by Teri Everett, a spokeswoman.
Oak Hill has expanded into leveraged buyouts, high-yield debt and hedge funds, raising more than $4.6 billion from investors, including Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft.
News Corp. hired the New York investment banking firm Allen & Co. to advise it on the sale of the TV stations in June. Two months later, it agreed to buy Dow Jones, publisher of Dow Jones Newswires, Barron's and The Wall Street Journal, after months of negotiations with the controlling Bancroft family.
Murdoch plans to use the Wall Street Journal brand to attract viewers to its television networks and Internet users to Web sites.
"News Corp.'s focus today is much more on Internet properties, such as MySpace, and cable," said Dorfman. The sale of the stations "will help News Corp. raise capital. News Corp. is not walking away from the healthy broadcast world."

Industrial Nanotech, Inc. Announces New International Supply Chain Expansion

Nanotech business is becoming the most precious business in the world following the upgrowing demand and service of the sector

Industrial Nanotech, Inc. (Pink Sheets:INTK), an emerging global leader in nanotechnology, announced today that the Company has severed its relationship with Mercatus & Partners Group, of Rome, Italy as joint venture partners for a manufacturing facility in Italy and is moving to expand the Company's supply chain for Europe, the Middle East, and Asia with manufacturing in Budapest, Hungary and a fulfillment center in Shanghai, China.

Stuart Burchill, CEO of Industrial Nanotech, Inc., states, "The relationship with Mercatus & Partners Group was not productive or suitable for Industrial Nanotech, Inc. and we have terminated the relationship. However, pending deals make it a priority that we ramp up our ability to provide large quantities of product on a regular basis to Europe, the Middle East, and China. We are currently in negotiations with a facility in Budapest, where one of our key coating scientists maintains professional relationships sufficient to provide day to day quality control monitoring, to provide our Company with manufacturing capabilities and we plan to utilize the services of a fulfillment center in Shanghai. This strategy represents the most cost effective way to implement an efficient supply chain to meet our needs in these regions and without a major capital expenditure and with consideration for the protection of our valuable intellectual property."

About Industrial Nanotech, Inc.

Industrial Nanotech Inc. is rapidly emerging as a global nanoscience solutions and research leader. The Company develops and commercializes new and innovative applications for nanotechnology. Additional information about the Company and its products can be found at their websites www.industrial-nanotech.com and www.nansulate.com.

About Nansulate(R)

Nansulate(R) is the Company's patented product line of specialty coatings containing a nanotechnology based material and which are well-documented to provide the combined performance qualities of thermal insulation, corrosion prevention, resistance to mold growth and lead encapsulation in an environmentally safe, water-based, coating formulation. The Nansulate(R) Product Line includes both industrial and residential coatings.

Safe Harbor Statement

Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This release includes forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, the impact of competitive products, the ability to meet customer demand, the ability to manage growth, acquisitions of technology, equipment, or human resources, the effect of economic and business conditions, and the ability to attract and retain skilled personnel. The Company is not obligated to revise or update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this release.

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Technorati : Industrial Nanotech

BT creates Wi-Fi community

BT and Fon have finally confirmed their long-expected partnership, thus creating the largest Wi-Fi community in the world.

Fon was founded in Spain in early 2006. Broadband users who sign up to Fon's community agree to share their Wi-Fi connectivity through a separate, secure channel. They do this either for a 50 percent cut of the fees charged to their visitors or for the privilege of being able to surf other users' connections for free, though the community has since changed its rules to allow its members to do both.

One of the biggest hindrances to Fon's expansion has been resistance from Internet service providers, whose terms and conditions have tended to prohibit sharing of broadband connections.

Now BT, the largest ISP in the United Kingdom, has given its approval. By doing so, the telecommunications company has effectively extended its Openzone Wi-Fi network across the 3 million BT Home Hubs--or at least those Home Hubs whose users agree to share their broadband connection.

It is not yet clear whether BT users who share their connection will get remuneration for doing so, though it is likely that they will gain access to BT's new nationwide wireless network, plus Fon's global network of almost 200,000 hot spots. It is currently unclear whether BT's business customers will be offered the same deal.

BT has also invested an undisclosed amount in Fon and gained a seat on its board.

"This is the start of something very exciting for BT," Gavin Patterson, the managing director of BT Group, said Thursday. "Today we are launching a people's network of Wi-Fi, which could one day cover every street in Britain. We are giving our millions of Total Broadband customers a choice and an opportunity. If they are prepared to securely share a little of their broadband, they can share the broadband at hundreds of thousands of Fon and BT Openzone hot spots today, without paying a penny."

Patterson continued. "We have built a public Wi-Fi network and 12 wireless cities already, but today, we are saying to customers: let's build a Wi-Fi community together, which covers everywhere and serves everyone."

Martin Varsavsky, Fon's founder and chief executive, said, "From the beginning, Fon users believed in the concept of sharing and in the people's ability to participate in building something important that would benefit everyone," he said. "With BT Fon, those beliefs have proved to be well-founded."

Rumors that BT and Fon were in talks about the deal have been circulating for over six months, but Thursday's announcement is the first official confirmation of the tie-in. The collaboration between the two companies also raises the possibility of a comprehensive global network of Wi-Fi sharers--with the blessing of ISPs.

Fon has inked similar deals with Time Warner Cable in the United States--though that service is yet to be rolled out--and Neuf Cegetel in France, so BT broadband customers who agree to share their connectivity will soon gain free access to their counterparts' broadband in those countries.

Robert Lang, Fon's European chief, told CNET News.com sister site ZDNet UK on Thursday that Fon had compromised, in that its users will have to pay, albeit at a discounted rate, to use BT's Openzone hot spots and Wireless Cities hot zones, rather than gaining access for free.

The deal means that users of BT Fusion dual-mode handsets will be able to use those devices in far more locations around the world than had previously been possible. Fon also has a software client that can be used on Nokia's Wi-Fi-enabled N series handsets.

source : www.news.com

Technorati : Wi-Fi

The ecosystem of the mobile phone and iPhone,

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Just 74 days after launching its iPhone, Apple announced it had already sold 1 million of the things - a milestone that its previous blockbuster product, the iPod, took almost two years to reach.

And yet, to judge by the industry's chatter, the iPhone is already old news. More excitement swirls around rumours that Google, the Web-search giant that is Apple's neighbour in Silicon Valley, could enter the market with its own "gPhone." Google's boss, Eric Schmidt, has already said that the firm plans to bid for a prime slice of the wireless spectrum in a forthcoming auction, something Apple is also said to be considering.

In short, both mobile operators and handset-makers could soon be confronted with two of the world's sexiest brands as direct rivals. Publicly, Apple and Google are being diplomatic.

The industry is a stool with three legs - network service, devices, and the software and content that goes on them - and "I don't think any player in the ecosystem trying to glue it all together will be very successful," says Dipchand Nishar, who leads Google's mobile-phone strategy.

By this he may simply be conceding the obvious, which is that Google would not build hardware, even if it made the other two legs.

But Google seems to be up to something. It bought a company called Android in 2005 that specializes in mobile-phone software. It has Google Talk, a free Internet-calling service. In July it bought GrandCentral Communications, a firm that gives users one single phone number for life. And it recently filed a patent application for a new mobile-payment technology.

It would certainly be tempting to tie all these bits together into a new software "platform" for mobile phones and offer it to handset-makers as an alternative to existing smart-phone operating systems such as Symbian, Palm or Microsoft's Windows Mobile.

Naturally, Google's search, email and document services would be tightly integrated, along with its advertising technologies, which might pave the way for mobile service that is partly or wholly subsidized by advertising.

As a strategy, this might be just different enough from Apple's to assure harmony with its ally.

It would suit neither firm to open hostilities. So Google may concentrate on software for cheaper, mass-market devices, leaving Apple to make elegant, high-end hardware.

Technorati : ecosystem

International Privacy Standard proposed by Google

This seems to me like it will be good for global businesses as a universal standard will allow a more streamlined approach to how to handle individual data.The world's largest Internet search company wants to create new ways to help keep Internet users safe.

Search giant Google Inc. will propose on Friday that governments and technology companies create a transnational privacy policy to address growing concerns over how personal data is handled across the Internet.

Google's global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, will make the proposal at a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization meeting in Strasbourg, France, dealing with the intersection of technology with human rights and ethics.

Fleischer's 30-minute presentation will advocate that regulators, international organizations and private companies increase dialog on privacy issues with a goal to create a unified standard.

Google envisions the policy to be a product of self-regulation by companies, improved laws and possible new ones, according to a Google spokesman based in London.

"We don't want to be prescriptive about who does that and what those standards are because it should be a collaborative effort," the spokesman said.

Other organizations have already made progress on privacy standards, he said. For example, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) created a nine-point Privacy Framework designed to aid countries without existing policies.

Google today proposed that governments and technology companies need to work together to create an international method that details how the personal information of users should be handled on the Internet. Google's Peter Fleischer, chief privacy officer, challenged members of the United Nations to help make sure user privacy remains safe.

"People look to us to show some leadership and be constructive," Fleischer said before speaking before the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. "By supporting global privacy standards, there will be a debate and part of that debate will be what are motives our."

A large problem is that privacy standards can vary greatly among countries, something that can cause issues for companies that operate in many countries. Along with not having a federal privacy law to protect consumers, laws in the United States often vary state-by-state: another roadblock that will likely need to be fixed.

Another problem facing companies such as Google is that many of the laws are extremely out of date when compared to how the Internet has progressed. An Internet law created by lawmakers just 10 years ago cannot fairly be used today.

"Privacy laws have not kept up with the reality of the internet and technology, where we have vast amounts of information and every time a credit card is used online, the data on it can move across six or seven countries in a matter of minutes," Fleischer said.

Assuming that data is passed through a small handful of information in a short amount of time, companies need to create a safeguard to make sure the data remains safe -- especially since a lot of nations have minimal data protection laws, Fleischer added.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) recently created a privacy framework that organizers hope will help nations modify existing laws that deal with user privacy and protection. However, much work must be done due to legal gray areas and loose translation of the privacy framework - for example, general principles are highlighted, but nations are responsible for their own enforcement.

Google already has spoken with Yahoo! and Microsoft over privacy standards, and now plans to speak with regulators from a number of different nations.

At a time when Google is worried about government regulation and laws over privacy, critics of the search engine company claim its recent acquisition of DoubleClick Inc are concerned Google now has the ability to store too much user data. Due to rising pressure from European officials, Google agreed to hold cookies up to two years only - the company originally scheduled cookies to be deleted in 2038.

Some other privacy standard

The P3P standard

The P3P specification has a double nature. On the one hand it is standardizing technical issues to facilitate the exchange of privacy meta information. On the other hand it requires the website to provide certain information necessary to enable the user of do-it-yourself privacy protection (e.g. the entity processing the data, types of collected data, purpose of collection and the type of processing). Requiring this information P3P sets a (minimum) privacy standard.

By offering a P3P policy, websites are giving a binding promise to their users that they will follow the P3P standard as a whole. It is part of the promise to provide the information required by the P3P specification truly and comprehensively. It also includes a careful interpretation according to the P3P specification of what personal identifiable data actually is. All things considered using P3P means agreeing on a legally binding (minimum) privacy standard between the parties.

Legal Privacy Standard

Some countries have their own data protection laws requiring i.e. special user information or allowing data use for special purposes only. These legal privacy standards are especially within European Union member states higher than the P3P specification's requirements (e.g. which information has to be provided in the P3P policy).

The relations between the P3P privacy standard, other legal privacy standards and the parties involved are illustrated in the following chart.

Technorati : International Privacy Standard

Web TV show

MySpace still has a few cards up its sleeve -- including the connections it has to some of the top names in traditional media, thanks to its parent company, media and entertainment giant News Corp.

The social-networking site announced today that it has signed an exclusive deal with Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, the Hollywood duo that produced such hit TV shows as Thirtysomething and My So-Called Life, for the rights to a new Internet drama the pair are working on, called Quarterlife.

Episodes -- or webisodes -- of the show, which follows a group of twentysomethings through the eyes of one young girl with a video-blog, will appear first on MySpaceTV, and then on the Quarterlife.com website.

Jeff Berman, the general manager of MySpaceTV, said in an interview that the show was a "landmark moment" for MySpace, and that it would be "the highest-quality serialized content ever to appear on the Internet. We're talking about the same production values as 24 or Prison Break."

There have been a number of episodic TV-style shows created for the Internet, including the popular Lonelygirl15 show, which was developed by a trio of unknowns and also appears on MySpaceTV. More recently, former Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner's company created a show called Prom Queen, which aired on MySpaceTV and drew a large following.

Entertainment websites have been speculating for several months about a possible Internet offering from Mr. Zwick and Mr. Herskovitz, after a number of reports leaked out about TV writers and production staff working on something called Quarterlife. The Hollywood duo had a traditional TV show of the same name that ran briefly in 2005.

"We've been talking to [Zwick and Herskovitz] for the past several weeks, and we're delighted to be able to announce this," Mr. Berman said. The first "webisode" will be posted on MySpaceTV on November 11, he said.

Under the terms of the deal, the social-networking site has a 24-hour window during which the webisode will only be available on MySpaceTV. After that, it will appear on Quarterlife.com. Both sites will have interactive features, Mr. Berman said, but on MySpace viewers will be able to interact with the cast through their MySpace pages.

MySpace users and bloggers on other sites will also be able to "embed" the webisodes in their pages by pasting in a small chunk of code, as they can with video clips on other sites such as YouTube, Blip.tv and DailyMotion.

When asked whether the new show would have a mobile component involving cellphones, Mr. Berman said "stay tuned." He also said that MySpaceTV was working on several other projects with content creators in the entertainment community.

According to Mr. Berman, more than 50 million users stream video each month from their MySpace webpages, and the social-networking site as a whole produces 500 million individual video streams

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Faced with Facebook's exponential growth, MySpace hopes to keep its users onside with what it says is the first network-quality television series produced directly for the internet.

The social network announced today it had secured the exclusive international distribution rights for Quarterlife, a new series from Emmy award-winning producers Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick.

MySpace Australia spokesman Darain Faraz said the deal was just the first of many shows it planned to offer through MySpace TV, which up until now has consisted mainly of user-submitted clips.

He said within the next few weeks the site would announce a number of "local content sharing deals" with Australian content providers.

"We are on the verge of announcing some fairly huge stuff," he said.

MySpace has 3.8 million registered Australian users but its growth rate now lags well behind Facebook's, which earlier this year surpassed 200,000 Australian users.

But where Facebook's expansion is now being driven by third-party applications, which have rapidly expanded the functionality of the site, MySpace is looking to hold on to its users through new features such as MySpace TV and Instant Messenger.

Quarterlife, which will premier in seven languages on MySpace's global sites on November 11, delves into the lives of six people in their 20s and charts their "coming of age as a part of the digital generation".

The show was unashamedly written to appeal to today's tech-savvy youth - the central character, a young woman named Dylan, is a blogger whose video diary divulges a few too many of her friends' closest secrets.

It purports to be a "truthful depiction of the way young people speak, work, think, love, argue and express themselves".

To that end, Herskovitz and Zwick - the force behind My So-Called Life, thirtysomething, Legends of the Fall and Blood Diamond - will invite their audience to participate in the ongoing development of the series "through writing and video submissions".

There will be 36 episodes in total and the producers plan to create a mini social network around the show through a website, quarterlife.com. It will also have its own profile page on MySpace, which MySpace says will include bonus content such as character profiles, behind-the-scenes video footage and storyline secrets.

Herskovitz and Zwick said the fact Quarterlife was an independent project meant they had full "creative autonomy", which isn't always possible when producing shows for traditional TV networks.

"For better or worse, Quarterlife is truly our own vision," Herskovitz said.

The Quarterlife concept was originally conceived three years ago as a TV pilot called "¼ life", developed for the US network ABC. The project was axed due to "creative differences" between the producers and ABC, after which the script was completely rewritten for an internet audience.

"When Emmy award-winning producers come to MySpace TV - you know this is reaching a whole new level," Myspace CEO Chris DeWolfe said in a statement.

In the US, MySpace has already dabbled extensively in digital broadcasting, securing the rights to a number of smaller series and short clips including the web series Prom Queen, a teen-oriented serial drama made by a US studio owned by former Disney boss Michael Eisner.

Technorati : Myspace, Web TV

US requests WTO mediation in copyright enforcement case against China

The United States has asked the World Trade Organization (WTO) [official website] to establish a "dispute settlement panel" [press release] in its case against China for alleged lax enforcement of copyright and trademark violations [JURIST report; WTO backgrounder], the Office of the US Trade Representative [official website] announced Monday. The request came after the US and China failed to resolve their differences through bilateral consultations [WTO backgrounder] and will be considered by the WTO Dispute Settlement Body [WTO backgrounder] during its next session on August 31.

The case, filed in April, was denounced by Chinese officials [JURIST report] who warned that it would "seriously undermine the cooperative relations the two nations had established in the field." The US also has another case against China [WTO backgrounder] pending, which accuses the Chinese government of adopting "measures that restrict trading rights with respect to important films for theatrical release," audiovisual home entertainment products, and publications. In February, US Trade Representative Susan Schwab [official profile] announced a case [WTO backgrounder] against China for its practice of subsidizing enterprises that "purchase domestic over imported goods or [meet] certain export performance criteria."

AFP/File Photo: Counterfeit CDs and DVDs are displayed in Beijing before being destroyed in an effort to...

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The United States on Monday asked the World Trade Organization to mediate a copyright trade dispute with China, saying bilateral talks have failed to close loopholes that allow counterfeiters to flourish.

It marked the third time in less than a year that the United States has sought a WTO dispute settlement panel to help resolve trade frictions with the leading emerging superpower, whose ballooning trade surplus has become a political flashpoint.

Washington filed a complaint with the WTO against China in April, alleging China's legal regime for protecting and enforcing copyright and trademark protections was unfairly deficient.

Chinese-made counterfeit goods -- from software and DVDs to luxury leather goods and watches -- are widely available in the US market.

Bilateral talks held in early June within the framework of the WTO dispute process proved fruitless, the office of the US Trade Representative said.

"The United States and China have tried, through formal consultations over the last three months, to resolve differences arising from US concerns about inadequate protection of intellectual property rights in China," USTR spokesman Sean Spicer said in a statement.

"That dialogue has not generated solutions to the issues we have raised, so we are asking the WTO to form a panel to settle this dispute."

The US request will be considered by the WTO Dispute Settlement Body at its next meeting, scheduled on August 31, the USTR said.

"In pursuing this action, the United States is seeking to eliminate significant structural deficiencies that give pirates and counterfeiters in China a safe harbor to avoid criminal liability," the trade office said.

Spicer said that China had taken "tangible steps" in recent years to protect intellectual property, but "we still see important gaps that need to be addressed."

There was no immediate official reaction from the Chinese government.

The United States, joined by Canada and the European Union, requested a WTO panel in September 2006 to help settle a dispute over automobile parts. The complainants accuse China of imposing charges that unfairly discriminate against imported auto parts.

In July, the United States, joined by Mexico, asked for a panel to mediate a dispute over allegedly illicit Chinese subsidies.

In the documents lodged with the WTO, the two countries target tax breaks they claim China offers to companies if they buy Chinese supplies instead of imported goods or that appear to be based on a firm's export performance.

Both cases are still under way.

When bilateral consultations fail, the WTO in principle has six months to resolve the dispute. Usually the trade body sides in favor of the party bringing the complaint, but the loser has the right to appeal and the dispute can drag on for years.

The gaping and growing US trade deficit with China -- which hit 232.5 billion dollars last year, according to official US figures -- has triggered a backlash in the United States.

US lawmakers are pushing for legislation to allow for sanctions against Beijing over what is seen as its manipulation of the yuan exchange rate to gain an unfair trade advantage.

Critics of China in the United States say the yuan currency is undervalued by as much as 40 percent, making Chinese exports cheaper.

China revalued its currency in July 2005 and Beijing has since repeatedly said it will allow the yuan to strengthen as part of overall reforms to a financial system it says would risk full collapse with a full flotation.

Technorati : against China