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New York, NY- March 07, `08 – CBS RADIO and AOL today announced a ground breaking partnership whereby CBS RADIO will power AOL Radio, combining two of the largest online radio networks and giving millions of listeners unlimited and free access to the most diverse lineup of programming available. Additionally, the two companies will work together to create a number of product enhancements including a new player, as well as complete support for the Mac.

Once the AOL Radio’s stations are integrated into its operations, CBS RADIO will drive advertising sales for AOL’s more than 200 award winning stations in addition to its own online streams of more than 150 radio stations and custom channels.

A brand new state of the art player developed by CBS RADIO and incorporating all the favorite features AOL listeners are accustomed to, and more, will be launched this spring.

The new player will allow audiences to toggle between stations; view song titles, album information and link to websites featuring the current artist being streamed; access favorite stations via presets, rate and share songs with family, friends, and coworkers; purchase individual songs, albums and concert tickets; and link to a host of additional web content, including photos, videos, promotions, contests, news headlines, sports scores, trivia, and concert information, among other topics. More at AOL.

Dec 30, `07 — The browser that helped kick-start the commercial web is to cease development because of lack of users. Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported after February 01, 2008, the company has said.

Netscape’s usage dwindled with Microsoft’s entry into the browser business, and Netscape all but faded away following the birth of its open-source cousin, Firefox.

“While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Recently, support for the Netscape browser has been limited to a handful of engineers tasked with creating a skinned version of Firefox with a few extensions.” Netscape Director Tom Drapeau wrote in a blog entry Friday.

In recent years, Netscape has been little more than a repackaged version of the more popular Firefox, which commands about 10 percent of the Web browser market, with almost all of the rest going to Internet Explorer.

Browser Wars
Netscape was developed by Marc Andreessen, co-author of Mosaic, the first popular web browser. Mosaic was written while Mr Andreessen was a student at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois in 1992.

After graduation he set up Netscape Communications Corporation and began development of the Navigator browser. The first version was released in 1994.

It was quickly a success and dominated the browser market in the mid-1990s. But other companies followed its success, notably Microsoft, which bundled its Explorer software with its operating systems.

People will still be able to download and use the Netscape browser indefinitely, but AOL will stop releasing security and other updates on Feb 01, `08. Drapeau recommended that the small pool of Netscape users download Firefox instead.

Microsoft is expected to launch a new version of IE 8 in 2008, whilst the third version of Firefox, codenamed Minefield,  is currently available as a beta, or test version.

Dec 04, ‘07 — Gmail rolled out a new feature to make it even more convenient and useful to chat from Gmail: AIM support.

Now you can now chat with all your AIM buddies right inside Gmail. Just click on the upside-down triangle next to “set status here” in your Gmail chat and select “Sign into AIM” from the drop down menu. Once you’ve entered your AIM log-in information, your AIM contacts will appear intermingled among your Gmail contacts, and you can select an AIM contact and chat with them directly.

This is just one of the first new features Google’s email service launched using Gmail’s new code structure. This is rolling out in the newest English version of Gmail first and will be available in other languages soon. More at Google.

NEW YORK –BUSINESS WIRE– Dec 03, ‘07 — Klausner Technologies announced today that it has filed patent lawsuits under its visual voicemail patents against Comcast, Cablevision and eBay’s Skype with damages and future royalties estimated at $300 million.

The lawsuit asserts that the above companies’ VOIP voicemail products and services infringe Klausner Technologies’ U.S. Patent 5,572,576. The patent has already been licensed to various other companies which provide the same visual voice messaging services, including Time Warner’s AOL for its AOL Voicemail services, Vonage Holdings for its Vonage Voicemail Plus services as well as others, under the Klausner Patents.

Cablevision’s Optimum Voicemail, Comcast’s Digital Voice Voicemail and eBay’s Skype Voicemail each violate Klausner’s intellectual property rights by allowing users to selectively retrieve and listen to voice messages via message inbox displays.

Against Apple:
Klausner Technologies also announced today that it has filed a patent lawsuit under its visual voicemail patents against Apple on the iPhone, with damages and future royalties estimated at $360 million.

The lawsuit asserts that Apple’s iPhone Visual Voicemail infringes Klausner Technologies’ U.S. Patents 5,572,576 and 5,283,818.
Klausner Technologies was founded by Judah Klausner, the inventor of the PDA and electronic organizer. Apple’s original groundbreaking PDA, the Newton, was, in fact, covered under an OEM patent license granted by Judah Klausner over twenty years ago under his landmark US Patent 4,117,542.

The iPhone violates Klausner’s intellectual property rights by allowing users to selectively retrieve voice messages via the iPhone’s inbox display. Apple has called iPhone’s Visual Voicemail “one of the greatest advances in the history of mankind … without question.”

Against AT&T:
Klausner Technologies further announced today that it has filed a patent lawsuit under its visual voicemail patents against AT&T for selling the Apple iPhone, its Visual Voicemail service and other visual voice messaging services, with damages and future royalties estimated at $360 million.

The lawsuit asserts that sales of Apple’s iPhone, Visual Voicemail and other visual voice messaging services implemented by AT&T infringe Klausner Technologies’ U.S. Patents 5,572,576 and 5,283,818.

All three suits have been filed by the California law firm of Dovel & Luner in a federal court in the Eastern District of Texas.

Consumer demand for bandwidth could see the internet running out of capacity as early as 2010, a new study warns. US analyst firm Nemertes Research predicted a drastic slowdown as the network struggles to cope with the amount of data being carried on it.

Such gridlock would drastically affect how people use the web and could mean the next Google or YouTube simply doesn’t get off the ground, it said. The report said billions needed to be spent upgrading broadband networks.

It put the figure at around $137bn (£66bn) globally. For users, the slowdown could see a return to the bad old days of dial-up, the report predicts. “It may take more than one attempt to confirm an online purchase or it may take longer to download the latest video from YouTube,” the report cited. But it is the knock-on effect for new services that could be the real problem, report authors think. “The next Amazon, Google or YouTube might not arise, not from a lack of user demand but because of insufficient infrastructure preventing applications and companies emerging,” the report warned.

The demand for bandwidth-intensive applications shows no sign of abating. Nearly 75% of US internet users watched an average of 158 minutes of online video and viewed more than 8.3bn video streams during May, according to research by measurement firm comScore.

The financial invested required to “bridge the gap” between demand and capacity would range from $42bn to $55bn in the US, Nemertes estimates. The report is part-funded by the Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA) which campaigns for universal broadband in the US.

NEW YORK & TEL AVIV, Israel –BUSINESS WIRE–November 11, ‘07 — AOL announced today that it has acquired Yedda, Inc., a leading semantic social search Questions and Answer service. Yedda will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL.

Founded in 2006, Yedda employs patent-pending technology that automatically matches questions to other related questions and topics, while selecting the best available users to answer the question. Yedda’s semantic matching technology intelligently routes questions to relevant communities of Internet users who can ”syndicate” their expertise and spark a community-wide dialogue of people invited to discuss and learn from each other’s experiences.

Using Yedda’s technology, AOL will incorporate the Questions and Answer functionality into select programming areas on AOL.com and will further integrate ”Questions & Answers” into its experiences in the coming months.

“In the course of our daily lives we often leverage the experience and expertise of friends, colleagues and professionals like doctors and lawyers to get answers to questions we have,” said Ron Grant, President and COO of AOL. “Incorporating Yedda’s unique technology into AOL enables us to bring together our traditional search resources and an entire community of people to help users quickly find answers to questions.”

NEW YORK & DULLES, Va.–BUSINESS WIRE–Nov 07, ‘07– AOL today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Quigo, a leading site and content-targeted advertising company based in New York. When completed, the acquisition will let AOL offer contextual advertising that matches ads to the contents of a Web page. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Founded in 2000, Quigo provides innovative, performance marketing solutions for advertisers and premium publishers. The company has more than 500 premium publisher relationships, including a recently finalized deal with Time, Inc., and has a broad network of roughly 3,000 advertisers. Quigo’s AdSonar technology lets advertisers purchase ads on Websites based on specific pages, sections, topics or keywords. Quigo offers many types of advertising and a variety of pricing options including text, display and video ads bought on a cost-per-click, cost per impression, or cost per time basis.

In addition, it operates FeedPoint, a search engine marketing business that helps local and retail advertisers efficiently manage their marketing relationships with search engines and comparison shopping platforms.

Quigo will be the fourth advertising company AOL has acquired in 2007. Earlier in the year, AOL acquired Third Screen Media, a leader in mobile advertising, ADTECH AG, a leading ad serving platform based in Frankfurt, Germany, and TACODA, a leading behavioral targeting company. In addition, in September, AOL announced the formation of Platform-A, the world’s largest digital display advertising platform, which reaches over 91% of the online audience.

“With Quigo, we are putting the final pieces of Platform-A in place. We will be able to offer advertisers and publishers the most advanced set of tools, including contextual and behavioral targeting, superior analytics, and access to the largest display network in the marketplace.” said Randy Falco, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, AOL.

Nov 05, ‘07 — In a widely expected move, Parsons will announce that he is giving up his post Dec. 31, and will be replaced by Chief Operating Officer Jeff Bewkes. Bewkes, identified as the heir apparent since 2005, will take over the CEO job on Jan 1.

Parsons is expected to remain as chairman of the board, and there was no timetable set for how long he will stay in that position. A Time Warner spokesman declined to comment.

Parsons’ contract officially ends in May 2008. He took over the company in 2002 after a difficult merger with America Online and has been credited with improving the company’s operations across its portfolio of movies, cable television and cable services companies.

His departure ahead of the contract’s expiration and speculation that he would retain the chairman role, has been long rumored.

Bewkes, who also serves as president of the company, was identified close to two years ago as the leading candidate to take over as CEO upon Parsons’s exit. Some investors said they believed tough decisions on spinning off or selling off divisions, including AOL, would more likely to be made by Bewkes. More at CNBC.

Nov 02, ‘07 – A New Jersey man was sentenced to more than two years in prison on Friday for helping send “spam” e-mails to more than 1.2 million America Online subscribers.

Todd Moeller, 28, was sentenced 27 months in prison in a federal court in New York after he was caught making a deal with a government informant to send junk e-mails — known as spam — advertising a computer security program in return for 50 percent of the profits, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan said.

Moeller and Adam Vitale of New York pleaded guilty earlier this year to breaking anti-spam laws and defeating AOL’s filter system by using a variety of computer servers and changing the header information on e-mails to ensure they could not be traced, court papers said. Vitale will be sentenced November 13.

San Francisco, CA – October 31, 2007 – Building on the success of its industry-leading video search engine, Truveo has announced plans to expand its rapidly growing service into several major markets for online video worldwide.  As the first step of this international expansion, Truveo is unveiling video search portals for France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Spain, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.  These new sites are available starting today at:

  ·         France - http://fr.truveo.com ·         Germany - http://de.truveo.com ·         India - http://in.truveo.com ·         Japan - http://jp.truveo.com ·         Korea - http://kr.truveo.com ·         Spain - http://es.truveo.com ·         Taiwan - http://tw.truveo.com ·         United Kingdom - http://uk.truveo.com  

Over the next two months, Truveo™ will continue to build on this expansion with the launch of video search sites for additional countries including Australia, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Russia and Turkey.  

The Truveo video search engine lets users search and browse through tens of millions of videos from thousands of sources across the Web.  Over the past year, Truveo’s service has experienced widespread adoption, and it currently reaches over 40 million users a month.* Truveo’s critically acclaimed flagship destination, Truveo, has received widespread praise since its August launch, establishing itself as the leader in the fast growing video search market. 

“The recent explosion of online video is a worldwide phenomenon.  All over the world, individual users as well as major media companies are making their video available on the Web,” said Timothy Tuttle, CEO and Co-Founder of Truveo and Senior Vice President of AOL Video. “Truveo’s ongoing mission is to index and organize all of the video on the Web so that users can easily find the video they want – no matter where in the world they reside.” 

With a large percentage of its traffic originating from outside of the United States, Truveo currently serves a worldwide audience. To better serve its users from around the world, each new Truveo international destination will feature popular, high-quality video of regional interest and allow users to search and discover videos in their native language. 

Truveo is a one-stop destination where consumers can search across a wide range of content from major video websites around the world.  In addition to indexing user-generated video from popular video uploading sites such as YouTube, Dailymotion, Kewego, MyVideo.de, Pandora.tv, and Tudou, Truveo also features a wide selection of high-quality, professionally produced video from many of the world’s major media brands. For example, Truveo’s video sources include: L’Equipe, Le Monde, France 24 and TF1 from France; Berlin TV, Spiegel and ZDF from Germany; NDTV, IBN Live and India Times from India; KBC from Korea; El Mundo, Telecinco and Digital+ from Spain; Taiwan Television from Taiwan; BBC, Daily Star, EuroNews, EuroSport, ITN, Skynews, The Sun, and UEFA in the United Kingdom; and thousands more. More at AOL.

 Oct 31, ‘07 – Yahoo! announced on Tuesday it is adding media-playing features, large file transfers, new languages and other tools to its instant messaging service, Yahoo! Messenger. The move comes as a growing number of rivals — from AOL to social network sites like MySpace — boost their positions in the market for instant messaging services.

Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 launched as a beta and has added features similar to ones seen on social networks or media-sharing sites, including extra room to post a picture or other image next to contact names and the ability to share video or photos within a message screen. The service is adding languages from six new markets, including the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India and Vietnam, for a total of 25 international markets.

Yahoo! Messenger is one of the largest instant messaging service, with about 27.7 million users in September, up 19 percent from a year earlier, according to data from tracking firm comScore. AOL reported about 30.2 million users. Y! Messenger

SAN FRANCISCO, October 23, 2007 - AOL today launched a collection of mobile services designed to create rich mobile experiences that take customization, ease-of-use and experience-sharing to a new level. These products leverage many of AOL’s strongest assets including AIM, AOL Mail, AOL Search, MapQuest, AOL CityGuide, Moviefone and Winamp.

Starting today, mobile users will have access to a redesigned and highly customizable AOL.com WAP portal for mobile phones offering new mobile versions of AOL Search and AOL Mail, best-in-class services, such as MapQuest and Moviefone, and vastly expanded content in the areas of shopping, music, news and entertainment. In addition, those attending the CTIA show will be able to view an early version of AOL MyMobile, new downloadable software which features an easy-to-use interface that can be specifically tailored to users’ needs.

Further, AOL is expanding AIM functionality for mobile devices with a new text message-based AIM short code service and an exciting new GPS-enabled widget called AIM Buddy Finder. New enhancements to Winamp Remote offer more ways for users to enjoy and share their media and playlists on their cell phones.  

AOL.com WAP Portal AOL has introduced the new AOL.com mobile web portal, available at http://aol.com on WAP-enabled phones. New and enhanced features include:

- AOL Mobile Search

- AOL Mail- myAOL

- AOL Shopping Mobile

- Best-in-Class Information Services

- Vastly Expanded Content

AOL MyMobile will soon be available for Windows Mobile® devices as a free download.

- Mobile AIM Short Code & AIM Buddy Finder Widget

AOL has long been the leader in mobile instant messaging and today introduced two new services for AIM users. The first is a new AIM Short Code service, which is now available for mobile users on the Verizon and Alltel networks. This new feature delivers AIM instant messaging functionality through text messaging on a user’s cell phone, including “send IM,” “change status message,” “view Buddy List,” “add/delete buddy” and more. Users can send a text to the ‘AIMAIM’ short code (246246) to access the new service.

Also new is a WHERE™ mobile widget called “AIM Buddy Finder,” which allows users to set and share their locations with their AIM® buddies from their GPS-enabled phones. Users can see the location on a MapQuest® map of friends who’ve chosen to share their locations using the AIM Buddy Finder widget.- Winamp Remote

Earlier this year, Winamp unveiled Winamp Remote, a free service that lets users access and listen to music stored on their computers right from their cell phones. More at AOL