Big media chasing money isn’t new. That they’re coming to the oil-rich desert nations of late, is. More specifically, at the call of Abu Dhabi Media Company (ADMC), the cash-rich media and investment company owned by the local government, they’re converged here for the next three days, at the man-made…

Mail.com Media Corp, the owner of Nikki Finke’s Deadline.com and other portals, has finally closed and announced its JV deal in India, after working on it for a year: it has tied up with Indian media conglom Zee Entertainment, and will launch a local Indian portal later this year, the…

Women-focused content network Glam Media is on course to launch in France next year and has plans to open offices in more European markets and developing nations around the world after that. The US company, which organises content from 1,800 sites into its Glam.com flagship site, opened its UK office…

Last week I reported, based on AOL’s spinoff SEC filing, that Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) may be retaining AOL India and AOL’s venture investments. Turns out neither is happening, and was based on my misreading of the SEC filings. On AOL India, the company has denied Time Warner would be…

Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) purchased Arab portal Maktoob this summer for a reported $75 million and additional international acquisitions could be on the way. Keith Nilsson, Yahoo’s SVP for emerging markets, noted the purchase during his presentation to analysts Wednesday and said the company would “continue to evaluate expansion opportunities in…

Vdopia, a fast-growing video ad network startup, has raised $4 million in a first round of funding from Nexus Venture Partners; in conjunction with the funding, Vdopia has also announced the appointment of Rohit Sharma as CEO. Co-founder Chhavi Upadhyay tells us that the two-year-old company—which has offices in San…

AOL (NYSE: TWX) Inc, the new about-to-be-spun-off unit from Time Warner, has filed an amended filing with SEC detailing some of the spin-off specifics. This comes as it named nine new board member for the new company this morning. In it, the exact steps required for this complex spinoff. The…

Twitter has sealed a deal with Bharti Airtel, India’s largest mobile carrier, that will let its wireless subscribers receive tweets by SMS for free, and send them at standard rates. Co-founder Biz Stone said the company had worked “quickly” to get cheap, full-service SMS set up for users in India,…

NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) is close to launching a sports video site in India, focused on live streaming, we have learned. Sab Kanaujia, the VP of Digital Product Strategy & Development, confirmed as much in a tweet last week, and for now it is doing closed trials with cricket streaming…

Sixteen cities in 10 countries, from Baltimore to Bangalore, Denver to Dublin. Twenty-six Town Hall and All Hands meetings. Seventy-one product reviews. Fifty-one partner/customer meetings. The numbers charting Tim Armstrong’s 100-day immersion course as the latest chairman and CEO of AOL (NYSE: TWX) sound impressive but what do they add…

Another acquisition by Thomson Reuters: it has acquired private equity backed Indlaw Communications, a Delhi-based legal information company, for an undisclosed amount. Indlaw runs a legal, tax and regulatory information database website at Indlaw.com. The site, founded by lawyer Joseph Pookkatt in 2002, had received early stage investment from private…

India’s government has banned the controversial and popular local cartoon porn site Savitabhabhi.com. The government’s telecom department has asked all Internet Service Providers to block the website in a communication earlier this month, according to documents seen by our sister site contentSutra. There has been mounting concern in India over…

You couldn’t pick a more inopportune time to launch a new gaming console: video game sales remain strong, but the global financial slump has tanked overall electronics sales. But stealthy startup Zeebo isn’t worried about that. The S.F.-based company unveiled its namesake device at the Game Developers Conference today, a…

AOL’s international head lasted two years at his position, which is probably long enough these days at the Time Warner-owned portal. Maneesh Dhir, who was appointed EVP-international in January 2007, is leaving the company in about two months, according to an internal memo sent by COO Ron Grant, obtained by…

In keeping with new owner Rupert Murdoch’s focus on key Asian markets, WSJ.com launched its India edition this morning at India.wsj.com. India and China are the only two markets now with a dedicated section on the WSJ site. Readers accessing WSJ.com from India are automatically redirected to the India section,…

Female-focused ad net Glam Media has acquired online ad optimizer AdaptiveAds. Terms weren’t disclosed. The three-year-old AA is backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and has offices in San Francisco and Mumbai, India. In conjunction with the purchase, Glam Media is opening an office in Mumbai and establishing an engineering presence…

Board game marketer Hasbro has dropped its copyright infringement suit against Jayant and Rajant Agarwalla, the makers of the online version of Scrabble known as Scrabulous, AP reported. The Scrabulous app was taken down from Facebook this summer after Hasbro sued the brothers, who live in Calcutta. While Hasbro holds…

Updated after the jump with the full video of the session: James Murdoch is looking at the same economic clouds as the rest of us but his view comes with glints of silver. Murdoch, making some of his first public comments since he took over News Corp.‘s European and Asian…

Jayant and Rajant Agarwalla are telling fans they’ve had a partial victory in their effort to defend Scrabulous, their highly popular digital version of Scrabble. The LA Times reports that the two sent an e-mail to fans claiming the Indian court where they being sued by Mattel ruled that the…