The Morning Reboot:
- The video download service, Joost, is expected to announce a licensing deal with Viacom. Viacom, which has been in the news lately for going after YouTube with DMCA takedown notices, is expected to make hundreds of hours of programming from Viacom networks such as MTV, Comedy Central and Spike available to Joost users. In other Joost news, I received an email from the company over the weekend which announced the first Mac beta.
- OpenID is being embraced by AOL which is offering the free identification scheme to 63 million new users. If OpenID weren't such a great idea I'd have to say it just jumped the shark.
- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer claims that sales of Vista are not meeting projections because of piracy in Brazil, China and other nations. He says Microsoft will be using Windows Genuine Advantage to try and combat the problem. However, if Russia is any indicator increased pressure may drive many to switch to Linux rather than buy Vista.
- The beleaguered social networking music site Odeo is for sale. The official blog post from Odeo owner Evan Williams reads: “To clarify, what we're talking about is selling odeo.com and studio.odeo.com, including all code, the domain, brand, database of three million MP3s, etc. Not a company, but a site and platform that could be ramped up to something much bigger.”
