aol

Curt Viebranz, president of AOL's Platform-A advertising unit is gone, replaced by a manager who reported to him, AOL says.

Lynda Clarizio, president of Advertising.com, was named president of Platform-A on Monday in a shakeup that sent Viebranz out the door. The company won't say whether he was fired after being named head of Platform-A about six months ago.

Viebranz came to AOL last summer when it acquired Tacoda, of which he was chief executive officer. AOL has been on a buying binge, scooping up other online ad firms including AdTech, Buy.at, Lightningcast, Quigo, Third Screen … Read more

Time Warner's CEO said Tuesday a Yahoo-AOL deal should not be ruled out, according to a report in MarketWatch.

Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes told investors at the Bear Stearns Media Conference that his company would consider an acquisition that could create a stronger AOL for the media giant, according to the report.

"Would something added to AOL, or AOL added to something else, make it stronger and more valuable? We can't rule it out and we wouldn't. It's our obligation to make sure AOL gets into whatever configuration that makes it the strongest and most … Read more

We were lucky enough to get a chance to play with one of AOL's works-in-progress, a version of the company's popular Web mail service done entirely in Microsoft's Silverlight. It was briefly shown off at Mix '08 last week, but is not due to get into your hands for another month or two--where it will be an opt-in alpha before going out to everyone else when Silverlight 2.0 leaves beta.

In its current form it doesn't look a whole lot different from the regular version of AOL's mail. The big difference is in the … Read more

CBS Radio has agreed to share online streams from all 140 of its stations with AOL's online radio service.

According to an announcement posted to CBS's Web site, the media conglomerate will now power AOL's Web radio. Financial terms were not released.

"CBS Radio will drive advertising sales for AOL's more than 200 award-winning stations," the companies said in the statement, "in addition to its own online streams of more than 150 radio stations and custom channels."

In the spring, CBS plans to release a new online music player that will allow … Read more

Updated 3:50 p.m. PST to clarify that AOL was first Web chat app chosen for iPhone demo, but may not be the only one to run on it.

AOL's AIM chat application just got a major boost--it's the first "official" native Web chat application for the iPhone.

AIM on the iPhone was demonstrated earlier on Thursday at Apple's announcement of the iPhone software development kit in Cupertino, Calif.

AOL was chosen to build a test version of AIM for the iPhone in two weeks, Apple said at the event. No word on when … Read more

AOL is getting a lot of credit for "opening" its ubiquitous AIM instant-messaging software "to open source." However, like Microsoft did recently by revealing documentation to its APIs and protocols, all AOL has done here is open access to OSCAR protocols necessary to create open-source implementations.

This is great, but consider just how much more AOL could have done--and for its benefit--such as open-sourcing its instant-messaging server and client software.

Think about it. What revenue does AOL protect by keeping its IM software closed? Sure, there's advertising revenue from the obnoxious ads it sprays around the client, but that is thinking far too small.

The real money is in abundance. Or in "adoption-led markets," to borrow Sun Microsystems' nomenclature.… Read more

Yahoo, Time Warner reportedly talk deal to thwart Microsoft http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9886157-7.html http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9886254-7.html

Gates to Google: 'Your business applications stink' http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9884752-16.html

Adobe bites its tongue after iPhone Flash jab http://www.news.com/8301-10787_3-9886265-60.html

Warning: Your iPod may get you mugged http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9885873-7.html http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/ 1282422/researchers_ipods_attract_violent_crime

Is Microsoft’s ‘Singularity’ the OS of the future? http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9886184-7.html

NIN’s music experiment sells big numbers http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/05/076221… Read more

AOL on Wednesday announced the Open AIM 2.0 developer program, which opens up the chat network to third-party developers and services.

AOL is giving developers access to the AIM network to integrate the chat program into other applications and services, a first for the messaging service. Meebo and eBuddy are among the first partners.

The company also is rolling out a new advertising revenue-sharing platform in April called "AIM Money" in which developers of third-party applications can make money off display ads that appear next to AIM.

There are also new tools to aid developers of mobile … Read more

Yahoo and Time Warner have held talks on a deal designed to thwart Microsoft's bid for Yahoo, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Under a possible deal, Yahoo would acquire Time Warner's AOL in exchange for the media conglomerate taking a large minority stake in the combined company, according to unidentified sources familiar with the matter. The companies could save $1 billion a year, the sources said. Talks between the companies held earlier heated up when Yahoo reapproached Time Warner about a proposal to take to its board.

Meanwhile, Yahoo and News Corp. continue to … Read more