The war of words between the news media industry and Google makes for a great spectacle, and this week did not disappoint.

According to a report in the Silicon Alley Insider blog, Associated Press CEO Tom Curley is meeting with Google on Friday to press for the creation of a “news registry.” Here’s SAI on the AP’s move:

It hopes such a registry would propel its content to a higher rank in general search than the blogs that the news agency accuses of lifting its content.

Curley said the AP — which intends to form landing pages and a social-media desk, among other survival strategies — is “getting paid for about 12% of our content on the web.”

It was not clear what information SAI was basing its report of the AP-Google meeting on - the blog post didn’t specify whether one of its bloggers had spoken to Curley directly, or whether it was picking-up Curley’s comments from another report; nor did it have links to any other articles on the subject.

A Google representative emailed a statement that said the company regularly meets with its publishing partners to discuss a variety of initiatives. “We’re not going to comment on the specifics of any particular conversation at this time.”

One would hope Google is also having conversations with News Corp, which is ratcheting up the rhetoric of late.

Earlier this week, News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch told his own Sky News Australia in an interview that he was considering blocking Google from indexing its Web sites once the company begins charging people to read its articles on the Web.

On Friday, News Corp chief digital officer Jonathan Miller expanded on Rupert’s anti-Google gambit and stuck a timeline on the move, according to a report in Telegraph:

When asked how long it would be before Mr Murdoch took the step to block Google, which every media company relies upon to send them high levels of web traffic, Mr Miller said it would be soon - “months and quarters - not weeks”.

The story later quotes Miller dismissing the benefits that come from have its content accessible through Google:

“The traffic which comes in from Google brings a consumer who more often than not read one article and then leaves the site. That is the least valuable of traffic to us… the economic impact [of not having content indexed by Google] is not as great as you might think. You can survive without it.”

There’s been plenty of sabre-rattling from the news media when it comes to Google in the past. If News Corp doesn’t follow-through with its threat in the next couple of months, will it have proven itself to have no real clout in this fight?

Comcast’s Interactive Media president Amy Banse talks on this video clip about the launch of TV Everywhere in December at the NewTeeVee Live 09 event. TV Everywhere, for anyone who’s been on Mars for the last year, is the cable industry’s attempt to make cable programming available over the Web for no extra charge to paying subscribers. Comcast’s version of it will actually be called On Demand Online and is currently on trial with 5,000 Comcast homes. This chat with Banse gives some insight into the largest U.S. cable operator’s plans and includes a couple a couple news nuggets for watchers of this space:

• On Demand Online will launch, as previously hinted, this December.
• Banse says users will be able to watch their favorite shows with authentication even when they’re away from home (Is this the death of EchoStar’s SlingBox?). It’s not clear from this interview if out of home on demand will work when a user is outside the United States.
• Each home will have authentications rights to watch their shows on three different devices.
• One issue Banse acknowledges still needs to be sorted out is the right advertising model to help support this new channel. “We’re in the first inning” she says.

Much more here:

Here’s a blog post from our colleague Ben Deighton in London:

Robotic drone planes and night vision sniper rifles take their aim at traditional media in the latest installment of the Call of Duty series — Modern Warfare 2.

The game made about $310 million North America and the UK in its first day, dwarfing the up to $60 million that blockbuster movies gross on their opening.

But it’s not just in cash terms that games like Modern Warfare 2 are challenging the medium of film. Played on a wide screen TV in dazzling high definition, graphics have become so detailed and carefully rendered that they almost give players the sensation of being in a film themselves.

Like the first installment, players occupy a range of different characters, including a British special forces fighter and a U.S. soldier.

This means that the scenes range from assaulting an oil rig by submarine and attacking a base in the middle of a blizzard and escaping James Bond style on a snowmobile, to fighting through the oval office.

However the game subverts the largely historical message of the Call of Duty series, and instead paints a bleak future where players find themselves retaking the White House from Russian invaders and fighting pitched battles through U.S. suburban houses.

Publisher Activision even ended up having to give players the chance to opt out of a particularly gruesome scene where they are asked to mow down civilians in an airport in order to infiltrate a terrorist group.

However some scenes take the gaming experience to a whole new level, like the one where players find themselves on a space station watching a nuclear missile being launched into the atmosphere.

With Modern Warfare 2, Activision really has thrown down the gauntlet to other game makers. Let’s see how they respond.

Fresh on the heels of its $43 million financing round, social gaming company Playdom announced a pair of acquisitions Thursday in a move to expand its portfolio of games. It acquired Facebook game developer Green Patch and Trippert Labs, which develops games on Apple’s iPhone. Terms of the deal were not released.

Playdom Chief Executive John Pleasants said in a phone interview that while the company’s main goal is to develop its own titles, it will make acquisitions opportunistically. “We have ample cash to do deals on our own,” he said.

Social gaming companies are suddenly on investor’s radar screens. Earlier this week, Electronic Arts said it would pay $275 million in cash for Playfish, a Playdom rival, along with other consideration that could eventually lift the company’s valuation to $400 million. Social gaming companies earn money by selling virtual goods to players.

Pleasants, the former COO of EA, said the Playfish deal was a validation of what his company is doing. “It certainly validates the credibility of the space,” he said. “The valuation also was another statement of the value we can create.”

Playdom’s financing by a group of venture capital firms valued it at $260 million. Industry watchers say Zynga, the largest of the social gaming companies, could raise $1 billion to $1.2 billion in an initial public offering next year, if it decided to go that route.

Playdom, which has more than 28 million monthly active users and says it’s profitable, will have around 200 employees following the acquisitions.

How can mainstream news organizations retain (or regain) their audience’s trust in skeptical world where almost anyone with an Internet connection can be a publisher? That’s the topic a panel of industry experts will address tonight at the Thomson Reuters heaquarters in Times Square. We’ll be live blogging the event here from 7pm ET.

The panel comprises: Andrew Alexander, ombudsman, The Washington Post; Michael Oreskes, senior managing editor, The Associated Press; Lisa Shepard, ombudsman, National Public Radio; and Dean Wright, global editor of ethics, innovation & news standards, Reuters. Jack Shafer, editor-at-large for Slate, is the moderator.

If you’d like to put a question to the panel, leave it in the comments box below and we’ll ask a selection on your behalf.

The Web is supposed to be a breeding ground of innovation, but lately it’s begun to look like a game of monkey-see, monkey-do.

First came last month’s Twitter love-fest, when Web giants Microsoft and Google made back-to-back announcements on the same day that their respective search engines would begin to incorporate Tweets in search results.

Now giving away free Wi-Fi Internet access appears to be the promotional tool du jour.

On Tuesday, Yahoo promised free Wi-Fi to the estimated 500,000 people who wander through New York’s Times Square on any given day. The company will light up Times Square for the next twelve months.

Not to be outdone, Google announced on Tuesday that it was offering free Wi-Fi at 47 U.S. airports through January 15 as a special “holiday gift.”

Meanwhile, MediaPost reported that Microsoft has its own free Wi-Fi plan through a partnership with JiWire. The companies have been offering free Internet access at North American airports and hotels in exchange for a consumer conducting a single search on Bing, Microsoft’s revamped search engine.

As the Web giants compete to sell ad impressions, they’re increasingly trying to rope in web surfers at the starting gate - or at least at airports and in Times Square.

-Piers Linney is a self made entrepreneur and former City investment banker. He is currently Joint-Chief Executive Officer at Outsourcery, a leading communications and hosted IT company. The opinions expressed are his own.-

"Cloud computing" can sound like a very amorphous concept, perhaps even conjuring up images of important business data floating around in the skies above us. It often raises questions about control and security. But the reality is a lot more down to earth and it is quite simply the future of computing and the way in which businesses will consume pooled resources of software and hardware.

It is not a technology that is on the way or in "beta testing". Cloud computing uses tried and tested software that is just delivered in a new way. It is already empowering thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK while saving them money, increasing productivity and allowing them to get on with running their business instead of their IT.

The arrival of cloud computing - where software and hardware is pooled centrally and made available over the internet - has parallels with the early use of electrical power. When industry first started using electricity, each business had to build a generating plant.

This model was replaced with large centralised power stations with electricity distributed using the National Grid network - providing customers with "on-demand" power without any investment or maintenance costs and billing based on only what was used.

My business Outsourcery is a leading provider of communications and cloud computing solutions to 25,000 SMEs in the UK. We have two purpose built data centres, complete with security, 24/7 monitoring, expert staff, redundancy and real time back-up of systems and data across two sites that even most corporations could not afford. If one of our data centres was catastrophically destroyed, our customers would probably not even notice.

I have been involved in many start-ups and SMEs where looking after technology was a constant burden - involving the purchase of expensive servers and software and maintenance support.

The same expensive start-up costs were always needed - whether the office had a team of five or 25 people. Data back up solutions, PABX phone systems and the installation of ISDN lines were all part of the expensive communications and IT mix.

All of these systems were separate, with no integration. It usually was not long before we had to hire an IT Manager to look after the "stuff in the cupboard".

Things have changed. Now, businesses of any size can benefit from state-of-the art IT without enduring any infrastructure or maintenance costs. These businesses pay for the service on a per person, per monthly basis.

This is all done without the business needing its own server, telephone system or maintenance contract. Whether the business is a two-man band or a company with 200 employees in different offices, the technology can be rapidly deployed.

When documents, e-mails, contacts and other business critical data are switched from an "on-premise" server inside your office to the cloud it makes them accessible from any PC, laptop or mobile device anywhere in the world.

Mobile and virtual businesses are now a reality. Switching business critical functions to an external "cloud computing" solution is not really about outsourcing. It is more about reducing costs and focussing the resources of a business on what it does best - serving its customers.

Whether we are providing a hosted IT solution to a freight distribution company, a cake shop or a charity - the overarching aim remains the same: we handle the communications and IT while our customer gets on with the business of running their business.

We do this by providing a holistic solution which links an employee's work PC, laptop, landline telephone and mobile together. This is what we call "unified communications" - the seamless blend of real time communication (mobile, voice, video and instant messaging) with non-real time communications (e-mail and voicemail).

This is then seamlessly integrated with mobile devices, document collaboration and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions.

While the case for this type of cloud computing solution is compelling, IT managers of large and small companies still have fears about the risks involved in switching business critical IT functions to an external supplier.

For example, a YouGov survey, commissioned by IT assurance specialist NCC Group, found that 20 percent of IT managers working in large businesses believe that their outsourced systems and processes have less IT security than those based in-house. These fears have doubtless been fuelled by high-profile cases of outages where data has been lost and the common confusion with the low security available for users of consumer focused sites such as Facebook or Twitter.

Thousands of people with Sidekick smart-phones, for example, lost their address books, calendars, photo albums and other personal data which was stored in the cloud. But the reality is that outages where sensitive personal or business data is lost are extremely rare in the business sector. However, choose your hosted IT and communications supplier carefully as they are not all the same. Companies such as Outsourcery are attuned to the growth of cloud computing and the major commitment made to it by global-leading technology companies such as Microsoft and Google.

During my time in business I have experienced a failed IT back-up system - which was a result of it not being set up properly - and days without e-mail as the internet connection cable for our e-mail server had been knocked out by a cleaner and we were all abroad. The fact is that it is far more risky to house a server in your office where an accident or mishap can result in a server being damaged and business critical data being lost forever.

All businesses need to embrace cloud computing as it will make them more efficient and more productive while enriching their working relationships. Businesses already using cloud computing quickly ask themselves how their competitors can cope without enjoying the many benefits that this new technology brings.

I am sure that the last company to ditch its own electricity generating plant for a far cheaper, more efficient and more reliable on-demand supply via the national grid lost out to those that embraced the inevitable process towards the grid earlier on.

Cloud computing is the future of computing.

Cloud dialogues...

Imagine you are sitting in an airport in the U.S. using a wireless network and you urgently need to obtain access to a proposal on your secure intranet that you want to send to an important customer who needs it for a key internal meeting, but it needs to be updated.

You can see in a glance next to the document that one of your colleagues involved in preparing the proposal is available in your London office and online as their "presence" icon, which checks their diary and status, is green. Another is in a meeting and their status is red. You instant message your available colleague to ask whether they can help you to amend the document.

They reply "yes" and initiate a voice call over the internet at no cost. You put on your bluetooth headset, open the document and then start a web conference allowing you to have a face to face conversation.

At the same time you can share the document and collaborate to amend the document in real time. You bring in another colleague by dragging and dropping them in to the call window, but just converse by instant message to ask a few simple questions.

As soon as you've finished, you drop out of the conference, but your two colleagues continue using instant messaging as they've had an idea to improve the document. They actually then go on to escalate to a voice call from their desk phones by one click to continue the conversation. You save the document back to your intranet, which is automatically subject to version control.

You then look at your customer record launched from a CRM solution integrated with Outlook, which lists all of your company's communications with the customer to ensure that somebody hasn't already sent a similar document and pricing to a different decision maker. You then send the document by email to your customer and it is logged in the CRM system automatically and an automated notification is sent to your commercial team - with a link to the document on your intranet - so that they know that a proposal has been issued.

You try to call your customer in London and the call is routed over the internet to the UK where a UK call over the fixed line network is made so that you would only pay for a local call, but there is no answer so you leave a voicemail. You then close your laptop and head to your gate.

As you board the plane your colleague instant messages you on your smart phone to ask whether you got it out in time. As you read the instant message, your customer confirms receipt by email and thanks you for a speedy response and your follow up voicemail.

They also called your office number to thank you, as they don't know where you are, and left a voicemail, which is sent automatically as a sound file to your smart phone. You should have actually diverted all calls to your mobile though using the toolbar in Outlook that controls how people can, or can't, reach you.

You respond to your colleague by instant message typing "they have it. thanks". You then forward your colleague the customer's grateful voicemail as an email attachment from your smart phone - just before you switch off for your flight.

In my business, this is how we work every day. It astounds most people that see these powerful yet cost effective and scalable solutions in action.

After a few weeks of mysterious adverts promising a better alternative to iPhone, Motorola’s $200 Droid phone finally hit the shelves in Verizon wireless stores on Friday. Unsurprisingly, the launch failed to attract anything like the frenzy of an iPhone launch, which had people camping out for days at its peak.

Still, all the advertising, and the positive reviews from bloggers and gadget gurus including David Pogue and Walt Mossberg, did help to lure some customers to Verizon stores.

Tech website Cnet’s Marguerite Reardon said that she found about 100 enthusiasts lining up for Verizon’s special midnight opening in New York under what could hardly be described as balmy weather conditions. This morning, in a follow up story, her headline read “Slow start for the Motorola Droid?”.

In a research note entitled “Droid is no iPhone, not even Storm,” Jefferies analyst Bill Choi said the launch didn’t compare well with Verizon’s launch of the  much criticized BlackBerry Storm last year.

But Choi noted that store traffic was higher than usual in the locations he checked out and he said “anywhere between 5-7 people huddled around the Droid station at any given time.”

While some of the Droid phones being sold today are HTC’s new cheaper device, dubbed Droid Eris, Choi noted that all stores were reporting far better demand for Motorola Droid than that of HTC.

The “Motorola brand is helping and people really like the keyboard” said Choi who estimated that Verizon could sell as many as 750,000 of the Motorola Droid devices by year end.

That’s no iPhone, but it’s somethign, especially for Motorola’s Sanjay Jha who is betting the future of the entire company on Google’s Android system.

(Reuters Photo of Motorola’s Droid)

Covering Thomson Reuters Corp for almost two years has taught me that people like to cast my company in a recurring role in media deal parlor games. Now that the company’s arch-rival Bloomberg LP will buy BusinessWeek magazine from McGraw-Hill, lots of my pals in the media world are wondering: Will Thomson Reuters buy a mainstream news or business news magazine? Or newspaper? Why not Forbes? Why not the Financial Times?

Keep in mind that Thomson Reuters likes to remind people when they ask these questions that Thomson Corp, before buying Reuters, got out of its Canadian newspaper empire for a reason. (See below)

I asked our chief executive, Tom Glocer, a question along these lines on a Thursday phone call he had with reporters to discuss the company’s third-quarter financial results.

Here is what he said:

Thomson did a remarkable job, far earlier than any other company I know, of seeing what was coming and transitioning their business out of print for the most part… I don’t see any particular time or reason at this juncture why we should go the other way.

Later on Thursday, when I interviewed Glocer, we returned to this theme. (I can’t help it, I’m a print guy.) I used the Financial Times, owned by Pearson Plc and beloved of its CEO, Dame Marjorie Scardino, as a sample target:

Here is Glocer’s reply:

When I came to London, Marjorie was famous for saying she would never sell the FT, or it would go “over my dead body.” There were many years in which the FT had fallen on harder times when people held that up as well: Marjorie has to go before the FT.

That sounds like a “no” on the FT. What about other properties?

Is it impossible that somewhere in the world that we’d take a print property and move it electronic? No, but we’re not looking to go out and buy consumer print publications. That’s not what we think our business is.

That sounds like a “no” on print. At that point, Chief Financial Officer Bob Daleo took over, saying that Thomson Reuters is a company where “what we shy away from are advertising-based models. We charge for content, we charge for information and news.”

What about Reuters.com, an ad-supported site that runs our news? Glocer said:

I would argue that the overwhelming amount of our news is behind the firewall in the sense that you only get it as part of a product that you pay for. It’s great that we have it. I’m very proud of reuters.com. I use it on weekends and evenings when I’m not in front of my bigger service, my subscription service.

I asked one more question on print: Why did Thomson Reuters get involved in any way at all with ZelnickMedia’s losing bid for BusinessWeek? What was that about?

We had no ownership interest or economics in the deal… We have done very similar things already. I would point you to the deal with the International Herald Tribune where Reuters supplies a couple pages’ worth of business news. So the way I’d think of it is, we have a news agency providing television, text, photos, etc…. There is no particular magic about BusinessWeek. We stand ready to do sensible, commercial deals to help deliver value to media customers, and it’s not a sort of, ‘Well the TR play is BusinessWeek.’ It never was. For a while it got reported like that because it was amusing to people.”

And that’s the last word on print…today.

Google doesn’t want you to be afraid of the cloud.

The company announced a new feature on Thursday that lets people view all the personal information they’ve entered into Google’s sundry Web-based products over the years.

The information in Google’s new Dashboard covers everything from your personal account information for email and other Google services, to your viewing history on YouTube and the photos you’ve uploaded to Picasa. It’s information that was always accessible in the past, but Google is now making it viewable in one, all-inclusive snapshot.

Privacy advocates have long warned that Google is accumulating too much information about people through its broad menu of Web-based services and not providing enough insight into how the information is being used.

Whether Google’s Dashboard will appease them remains to be seen.

Google said it will begin by incorporating information from 23 Google products in the dashboard, with more to come in the weeks ahead.

Of course, the dashboard also has the benefit of reminding consumers about all the Google services they signed up for in the past and may forgotten about - a reminder that just could lead someone to start using a product again.

For Google, transparency has its benefits