wineliterature.com

“The longer we wait, the value will disappear,” Jenson said.

But he also made it clear that the company’s wallet will have only $2 billion in it to offer Take-Two for a short time.

Riccitiello talked a little bit about the timing of the actual offer, saying he and Take-Two Chairman Strauss Zelnick had had discussions about a potential merger, but that in January, Take-Two rejected EA’s interest.

I’m not usually one to get up for something happening at 5 a.m. PT, but in the case of this morning’s Electronic Arts conference call to discuss its proposed $2 billion takeover bid of Take-Two Interactive Software, I made an exception.

On February 19, EA upped its bid to the current $26 a share.

That certainly makes sense, since that game, the first major follow-up to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, one of the best-selling console games of all time, is very likely to be a huge financial success.

Riccitiello did make one comment as to the timing of the acquisition offer that, on its face, would suggest that EA’s interest in Take-Two, publishers of the hugely popular Grand Theft Auto franchise, was not strictly based on the need to maintain the No. 1 position.

Fair enough.

He echoed Riccitiello in saying EA and Take-Two had had conversations for about a year, and that in January, Take-Two said it would decline to negotiate a deal.

If true, that would be an interesting piece of information.

That’s because I assumed that EA might provide some new piece of information that would materially enhance details of the game maker’s Sunday bid announcement.

“We actually think this is a depreciating asset from this point forward,” Riccitiello said, alluding to the theory that once GTA IV is published, Take-Two will have to get by on the sales of its weaker games and that EA won’t be there to rescue it if Take-Two doesn’t play ball.

He pointed out that he had been in discussions with Take-Two management last year and that he had been interested in making a deal like this happen as early as last spring but decided to wait to make any kind of offer until the completion of the EA reorganization it announced last June, in which it split the company into four distinct labels: The Sims, EA Sports, EA Games, and EA Casual Entertainment.

Jenson added that on February 6, EA made a formal proposal of $25 a share, which Take-Two officially rejected on February 15.

Electronic Arts’ conference call explained just a bit more about its takeover bid for Take-Two Interactive Software, maker of the Grand Theft Auto game franchise.

Most notably, though, EA did not address the question I was most curious about: the necessity of making some big acquisition to maintain its top-dog spot in the video game-publishing industry after Vivendi’s announced mammoth purchase of Activision in December.

(Credit:
Take-Two’s Rockstar Games division)

EA’s chief financial officer, Warren Jenson, also gave a little more specific insight into the timing of EA’s actual acquisition bid.

In reality, the EA conference call, which lasted nearly an hour, was largely a rehashing of the information the company published in its Sunday press release, accentuated by some more detail on the financial aspects of the deal–in particular the $26 a share it is offering Take-Two shareholders–as well as some thoughts by EA’s CEO, John Riccitiello, on timing.

And in fact, one of the most interesting things Riccitiello said on the call had a lot to do with the specific tenor of the content in the GTA franchise.

And while all the questions asked on the call were by financial analysts interested more in the bottom-line reasoning for the takeover bid, I was a little surprised that none asked the Activision question. I would have asked it myself, but reporters are never allowed–in my experience–to ask questions on this kind of conference call.

“The Activision-Vivendi transaction provides some competitive incentive
for EA to add scale and bolster its product portfolio,” Colin Sebastian, a video game industry analyst with Lazard Capital Markets, said in an e-mail to me shortly after the EA call, “though it also appears in this case that EA and Take-Two had discussions long before the Activision announcement.”

Riccitiello expanded on that thought a little later in the call.

“We…wanted to give a wide berth to GTA,” Riccitiello said. “We didn’t want, in any way, shape, or form, to get in the way…We wanted to see it come out on time so we get our shot at it.”

The EA chief executive also said he wanted to make sure, in his company’s timing of its Take-Two bid, that it didn’t mess with the creative process surrounding Take-Two’s most valuable asset, the forthcoming Grand Theft Auto IV, which is scheduled to ship April 29.

My mistake.

“It is our intention to make this a friendly deal,” Jenson said. “Our next step is to sit down with Take-Two’s management and get a deal done.”

The deal would “advance us particularly in our (market) segment shares,” Riccitiello said at one point in the call. “We’re notably (unpositioned) in M-rated content. This (would) give us the best M-rated content” in the business.

Those games are rated “M” by the Entertainment Software Rating Board, meaning that they are limited to being sold to those ages 17 and older. Never mind the “Hot Coffee” scandal of 2005, in which Take-Two was accused of hiding sexual content in its code, which ultimately made the game “AO,” or adults-only.

As with the company’s text-based mobile ads, the Google image ads are displayed on the basis of keywords that appear on Web sites that people visit with their mobile phones, Google said Wednesday.

(Credit:
Google)

Google works to identify fraudulent or accidental clicks and doesn’t charge for what it deems to be invalid clicks.

Mobile devices are a new frontier for the Internet in general and for the advertising business that Google and many others are building atop it. The mobile Web has been hobbled by tiny screens, slow and unreliable connections, and carriers’ data-access fees, but a new era is arriving.

Google offers a variety of small display ad sizes.

Google’s mobile image ads are similar to those appearing on ordinary Web sites, Google said, but are smaller and are limited to one per page. Advertisers will pay only when users click on an ad, as with the company’s text ads that appear next to search ads. Google requires only one ad per page, and the ads must link to mobile-specific Web pages.

During last week’s conference call to discuss quarterly financial results, Google co-founder Sergey Brin was bullish about the opportunity to bring advertising to the mobile Web.

Apple’s
iPhone has shown what’s possible. Increasingly widespread Wi-Fi makes it possible to bypass mobile-phone network operators. And initiatives such as Intel’s Mobile Internet Device and Google’s Android could lead to a new generation of devices.

“The mobile ads work very well,” Brin said. “There’s nothing to dissuade me it would be any worse than traditional desktop search.”

Google is expanding its advertising business into a new domain: graphical ads that appear on mobile devices.

This pay-per-click model is popular among advertisers who want to match expenses to active expressions of interest in their ads, though “click fraud” can mean some of that activity is bogus.

The Drobo storage device has always intrigued me as a backup server that is smarter and more flexible than the RAID box you would typically cobble together with an old PC. But without network ability it seemed like half a product: powerful storage logic shackled to lame connectivity. That’s largely been fixed with the launch of DroboShare, a companion piece for the Drobo server that allows it to be network-attached.

The DroboShare mounted under a Drobo storage device

(Credit: Data Robotics Inc.)

DroboShare is a pricey add-on at $199, but it has gigabit Ethernet and is compatible with NTFS, HFS+, EXT3, and FAT32 file architectures, the last a nice addition we lamented the absence of in our original review. Support for a maximum 8TB capacity can be accomplished today by using two separate Drobo units loaded with four 1TB drives each and connecting both to a single DroboShare.

DroboShare is almost there. For the price, it should have pre-n Wi-Fi built in, as well. I mean come on, this is basically a gigabit NIC, USB 2.0 chip and a little firmware to translate four drive formats. That ain’t $200. And it should have a more elegant way to connect to the Drobo than a USB jumper cable. But like Apple, Sonos, and B&O, the Drobo folks are trying to harvest a cult, not a value-aware consumer.

If you are sophisticated enough to appreciate the qualities of Drobo architecture you should also crave networked storage, so I imagine DroboShare will be a hit. For now, my home-built RAID boxes are working very well.

Logitech's X-540 speaker system surrounds you with sound–for a song.

(Credit:
Logitech)

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

The X-540 includes four wall-mountable satellite speakers, a center speaker (which has a clip for attaching to flat-panel monitors), and a subwoofer–all of which combine to pump out 70 watts of audio power. The wired remote includes a headphone jack so you can plug in when the neighbors start complaining.

CNET never officially reviewed the X-540, but users gave it an average score of 8 out of 10. And Buy.com’s customers collectively rated it 4.5 stars out of 5. So if you don’t mind waiting on a rebate, here’s your chance to score a sweet deal on some surround-sound goodness.

If you use your PC for games, music, movies, TV, or anything else involving your ears, nothing beats a set of surround-sound speakers. Buy.com has the Logitech X-540 5.1-channel speaker system on sale for $44.99 shipped (after a $20 mail-in rebate).

The new OMAP3440 made its debut in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress 2008. This is the latest in TI’s line of OMAP applications processors, which are the equivalent of the CPUs inside PCs.

TI sells standalone applications processors like the 3440 to customers such as Nokia for use in high-end smartphones, but it is also talking up the potential for the 3440 as a chip for Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs). That’s Intel’s name for an evolving class of handheld computer that’s a bit more powerful than a smartphone but smaller and longer running than a notebook.

Texas Instruments has a new OMAP chip to set upon the world, and this time around it’s eyeing more than mobile phones.

The new chip, like the Nvidia APX 2500 also unveiled Monday, can record and playback 720p high-definition video. It uses ARM’s Cortex A8 core running at 800MHz and can be used with any modem. TI hopes to have samples out for customers to start testing in phone and MID designs by the end of the second quarter.

TI isn’t willing to give Intel any ground when it comes to portable handheld devices. Intel has already tried to gain ground against chipmakers like TI, Samsung Electronics, and Freescale Semiconductor with its XScale program. The XScale chip did fairly well as a standalone applications processor, but attempts by Intel to also get into the cellular modem business flopped, and the company offloaded the division in 2006 to Marvell Technology Group.

The idea is to gather some information on how News.com readers are currently using their iPods, or any MP3 players, in preparation for a story next week about the future of the iPod. We’ve spent a lot of time over the past six months talking about the
iPhone and the
Mac, so it’s high time we take a look at the device that is perhaps most responsible for Apple’s success this decade.

The iPod survey is back up and running, please take a minute or two to share your thoughts on the
iPod if you haven’t already.

News.com survey

Click here to take CNET News.com’s iPod survey

Due to an overwhelming response yesterday in just a few hours, we had to close our iPod survey before we could upgrade to a larger account that permits more responses. We got nearly 1,000 responses in 3 hours, which was far more than I anticipated when I signed up for the basic account. Thanks to PollDaddy.com for helping us get back up and running this morning.

Well, let’s assume for a moment that both events sell out, or at least get more or less the same attendance as they did a year ago. If that happens, how is a winner determined?

TechCrunch50 co-organizer Jason Calacanis says the conflict over the dates of his event and DemoFall’s are the fault of the Demo organizers.

Want proof of that? Well, TechCrunch 40 was a week later on the calendar last year than it is this year.

Demo Executive Producer Chris Shipley “may be crying that we are taking her dates, but that is false,” Blodget quotes Calacanis as saying. “Demo moved up their dates this year by three weeks to come after TechCrunch40. They (were) on 9/24 last year and we were the week before them. Demo decided to move their conference up to try and unseat us.”

According to Calacanis–who gave Blodget an “exclusive” interview on the matter despite telling me Wednesday that he was deferring to TC50 co-organizer Michael Arrington on the matter–the conflict is all Demo’s fault.

“If she wants to do the right thing, she should resign from IDG/Demo after this year and join the TechCrunch50 event,” Calacanis told Blodget. “We would love to have her on our team–that’s a serious offer. She should be working with Mike and I and help us bring TechCrunch50 to Europe, India and Asia.”

But if Shipley is telling the truth–and I have no reason to doubt her, especially given the calendar page I cite above–I think Calacanis may have his facts a bit twisted. After all, he doesn’t offer any evidence that Demo tried to ace it out on dates other than the fact that DemoFall 08 is a couple of weeks earlier than was DemoFall 07.

I’ve been trying to find proof of this announcement, and have so far been coming up short. But I do see proof, from a very old calendar page on Demo’s site that listed the dates of Demo’s main 2008 winter event all the way back when they were still planning their 2006 events.

My guess is that Shipley is going to hold on to her current job. But I remain open to surprise.

Another Calacanis statement to Blodget makes me wonder, as well. He said, “The marketplace is going to decide which conference model is better: pay for play or merit based with a $50,000 grand prize.”

Not to take Shipley’s side in this, but I sort of agree with her about one thing, and that is, in the end, the losers here are the entrepreneurs who are going to get wedged in between a news-hungry press trying to cover both shows and the VCs who want to be able to see what’s hot.

But as Calacanis surely knows, conferences move their dates around all the time. Witness the Game Developers Conference, which in 2007 was the week before South by Southwest. In 2008, it was a month before, and in 2008 it will be two weeks after, if my math is right. The reality is: event scheduling, which is often done years ahead of time, is tricky, and it’s somewhat rare for a conference to always be on the exact same dates.

(Arrington, by the way, set the tone for the environment by telling me, bluntly: “Demo needs to die.”)

I suppose even if Demo had only announced its fall dates at the end of the 2007 show, Calacanis’ point could be valid if Shipley et al had tried to move their event in front of the expected date of the 2008 TechCrunch confab.

(Credit:
Dan Farber/CNET News.com)

Of course, Calacanis ended his bullet-pointed “interview” with what he termed a genuine offer of a job for Shipley.

Now, I’m not involved in the date scheduling of either conference, but in a telephone interview Wednesday, Shipley told me that Demo schedules the dates of its events three years ahead of time and that the date of DemoFall 08 was publicly announced at the end of the 2007 fall event.

I’m reading Henry Blodget’s story on Jason Calacanis’ rant about how the Demo conference organizers are to blame for the scheduling conflict that pits TechCrunch 50 against DemoFall. And I have to say, I’m a little dubious of Calacanis’ statements.

Biondi is a senior managing director of investment adviser WaterView Advisors, former chairman and chief executive of Universal Studios, and former head of Viacom. Two years ago, Icahn tagged Biondi as his Time Warner CEO replacement, if he was successful in gaining control of the media company via a proxy fight, which ultimately was not successful.

Yahoo and Biondi declined comment for this story, and Chapple was at a retreat and unavailable for comment.

The Internet company had agreed to select two candidates from a pool that included Icahn’s former slate of dissident directors. Icahn was also appointed to Yahoo’s board as part of the proxy battle-ending agreement.

Edward Meyer, who was also on Microsoft’s slate and previously believed to be a lead candidate, fell out of favor, according a source over the weekend.

Apparently, while some of Yahoo’s directors liked Meyer, there were concerns regarding his age, the source noted. Meyer is 81 years old.

Such a cautious approach is understandable. Jonathan Miller, former head of Time Warner’s AOL, was initially part of the pool from which the two potential candidates would be selected, but when Yahoo asked Time Warner the day before its August 1 annual shareholder meeting whether Miller could serve on its board, the search pioneer learned that the media giant would object to his appointment, citing a noncompete clause in his separation agreement, a source familiar with the situation noted.

Yahoo is close to appointing John Chapple and Frank Biondi Jr. as its two additional board members, as it nears its Friday deadline to expand its board as part of a settlement agreement with activist investor Carl Icahn, according to sources.

Although Yahoo will be drawing its new directors from Icahn’s former proxy slate, it’s no guarantee that the new board members will agree to all of Icahn’s proposals or that their placement will entice Microsoft to come back with an offer. Icahn and the two directors will together hold just three seats on an 11-member board.

With Biondi and Chapple, Yahoo would not only be appointing two seasoned executives to its boards, but also one with strong ties to Icahn and another to Microsoft, which several months ago made a $33-per-share buyout offer for Yahoo, before withdrawing the bid when Yahoo returned a counterproposal of $37 a share.

The Wall Street Journal, which first reported Chapple’s position as a lead contender, noted that the company is in the final review stages of naming Chapple and Biondi as directors.

Chapple, president of Hawkeye Investments in Redmond, Wash., and former CEO of Nextel Partners, was also tagged to be on Microsoft’s proxy slate of dissident directors, when the software giant was entertaining making a run against Yahoo’s board to push its unsolicited buyout bid for Yahoo forward, according to a source familiar with Microsoft’s slate.

“We know who we want,” one source over the weekend said, though declining to elaborate the why the announcement has been delayed.

Microsoft and Icahn later teamed up with a subsequent proposal to buy just its search assets, which Yahoo rejected as undervaluing the company.

Update at 7:34 a.m. PDT on August 14: Frank Biondi Jr.’s decline comment has been added.

Icahn, in a CNBC interview earlier this week, characterized his communications with Microsoft’s management this way:

Microsoft is practicing the “Golden Rule” when it comes to Yahoo and shareholder activist Carl Icahn.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently shed a little light on the software giant’s relationship with Icahn in an interview with the Washington Post. In that interview, Ballmer said:

We had no contact with Carl Icahn before he bought his stake…Obviously, he has talked to some of our folks since then. He’s kind of an independent actor in the thing.

I wouldn’t say closely and I wouldn’t want to talk about it anyway. You know? I would just tell you that I do believe that Microsoft really eventually would want and would need this company, so, you say, well, you know, you can’t say that there will be a deal next week, but hopefully there might be something.

The software giant, which initially encountered a frustrating round of “radio silence” from Yahoo after announcing its unsolicited buyout bid for the Internet search pioneer back in February, is not treating Icahn in a similar manner, as the activist investor uses his proxy fight to push the two companies together for a merger.

Icahn, however, may actually want an ensemble role, much like he had in Oracle’s acquisition of BEA Systems earlier this year.

Documents filed last Thursday from ConnectU vs. Zuckerberg et al., which has been handled in a Massachusetts district court, reveal that a senior circuit judge in the court of appeals opted to allow ConnectU to reinstate its case.

ConnectU founders Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra had originally filed suit against Facebook’s founders in September 2004, claiming that CEO Mark Zuckerberg had nabbed their code and business plan while employed as a programmer for ConnectU when all four were students at Harvard. Also named in the suit were four early Facebook employees as well as the Facebook corporation itself.

But in the documents filed Thursday, the appeals court decision ruled clearly in favor of ConnectU. “Although the defendants have advanced other arguments, those arguments are either unavailing, or inadequately developed, or both,” the ruling read. “We reject them out of hand and, for the reasons elucidated above, we reverse the order of dismissal.”

“We hold that the jurisdictional claim in the amended complaint warrants full consideration and constitutes a viable hook on which federal jurisdiction can be hung,” the court document read. “Because this holding is at odds with the conclusions reached by the court below, we reverse the order of dismissal and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

In July, the Massachusetts court had requested that ConnectU present more concrete evidence to support its case, indicating that the would-be social-networking site didn’t have enough of an argument against Facebook. Facebook, meanwhile, argued that ConnectU’s claims were moot and requested that the case be dismissed.

Earlier on Monday, reports surfaced that Facebook may be close to a settlement on its longstanding legal dispute with former rival ConnectU, after several years of dismissals, appeals, and general unpleasantry. But a recent court ruling suggests that the timing may not be entirely random: a judge in a U.S. court of appeals ruled that ConnectU was allowed to reinstate its case, reversing Facebook’s request for dismissal.