EGEDA, the Spanish audiovisual producers rights-management society, has announced it will make the entire corpus of Spanish cinema available through Filmotech, a new online service for downloading movies, documentaries and animated and fictional series.
Filmotech, which will include information on film shoots, directors’ commentaries and new releases, hopes to secure agreements with European distributors to offer titles in other countries.
EGEDA management has also announced its intentions to reach deals with service providers such as Terra, Jazztel, Ya.com, Google and Amazon. According to its creators, the goal of Filmotech is to combat piracy.

Title: Estudio sobre inversión publicitaria en medios interactivos. Resultados del primer semestre de 2006.
Source: Interactive Advertising Bureau Spain (IAB Spain) & PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)
Date: October 24, 2006
Abstract: Interactive media developed far quicker than other media during the first half of 2006. The €126.25 million spent on this new channel represent a 91.37% growth compared to the same period last year and 2.5% of overall spending in advertising, according to Antonio Traugott, managing director of IAB Spain.
The driving force for growth in interactive advertising in Spain continues to be traditional advertisers, who represent 71.2% of the overall investment in interactive media, which mostly goes to search engines and sponsored links.
Among the highlights of the report compiled by IAB Spain and PricewaterhouseCoopers is the slight rise in advertising investment by telecommunications corporations and beverage companies. With respect to the former, this is due to the launch of the new operator, Orange, which has caused the withdrawal of its rivals’ campaigns; as for the latter, it is due to the legal restrictions imposed on advertising in the sector. Also highlighted is the progressive market maturity, which translates into an increase in the use of integrated formats in advertising campaigns, at the expense of floating formats such as pop-ups, which now account for a scant 4% of the overall investment. With regard to pricing models, the “click” formula took in nearly half of the overall investment, while the CPM model fell from its 2005 level of 42.2% to sit at 29.5% during the first half of 2006. The study also shows the appearance of new pricing models, such as per sale, per download or those based on connection time. 

Full Story (PDF, 45 Kb) (In Spanish)

With the nearly simultaneous launch of new versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer —both free programs— the gauntlet has been thrown down once again in the battle of the web browsers, one which previously featured Netscape and Internet Explorer, the latter of which delivering a crushing defeat at the end of the 1990s.
The Microsoft application is still the leader but no longer does it have the overwhelming 97% control it reached a few years back. The near monopoly has progressively opened up small windows of opportunity in the face of pressure from numerous competitors, such as Opera, Safari and a host of open-source browsers.
The leader of these is Firefox, a project of the open-source software foundation Mozilla. It has currently reached 10% of the market share and has 70 million users on diverse operating systems, including Linux, Windows, Mac, Palm and others.
Aside from the usual problems regarding functionality and security, the major difference between the two browsers is the same one dividing those backing proprietary software from those supporting free software. Representing the former group, Internet Explorer 7.0 has the full support of Microsoft, meaning its massive power in both finance and marketing, as well as the undisputed dominance of the Windows ecosystem in desktop computing. Its opponent, Firefox 2.0, is the product of a company with just 70 developers. It has limited economic power but the fervent backing of those who support open-source software, a trend that is steadily gaining followers. Thus the combat begins.

Articles in BusinessWeek, TechNewsWorld and BBC News

Customers at the base of the pyramid have aroused the interest of mobile telephone manufacturers. Motorola and Nokia, for instance, have launched low-cost models —priced under €100— with basic functionality, designed for emerging markets such as India and China, which have 1.1 and 1.3 billion inhabitants, respectively. These are markets with enormous potential for growth due to the current market penetration of mobile phones, which is just 32% in China and 11% in India.
The wireless telephone market is presently experiencing rapid growth in both countries. According to the Mobile World Briefing, from July through September 2006 the number of mobile telephone customers increased by 17 million in India and 16.8 in China.

News in Expansión (payment service), El País and The Inquirer

Reinaldo Rodríguez, president of CMT, the Spanish Telecommunications Market Commission, was a special guest speaker at the conference entitled
" Telecommunications Policy in Catalonia: Challenges in Infrastructures and the Management of Services", organized by the Center SP-SP (Public Sector–Private Sector) Center at IESE. At the conference, which took place October 23, Rodríguez noted that up to now legislation policies on the regulation of the telecommunications industry have prioritized theory above the real needs of the society. He criticized the adoption of inflexible policies, which have generated problems such as delays, conceptual issues and inequality in the development of communications between the different European Union members.

More information (In Spanish)