Friday, Aug. 29
Spam Hunt -- Earthlink filed suit in an Atlanta District Court Wednesday against an alleged spam ring that has used stolen credit cards to set up accounts and flood the Earthlink network with more than 250 million spam e-mails. Operating out of Alabama, the group is estimated to involve around 100 individuals. If successful, the suit would allow Earthlink to subpoena telephone companies, Web domain sellers, and other companies to reveal the identity of the spammers. Earthlink won a $16.4 million suit against the "Buffalo Spammer" in May and is currently also pursuing legal action against a second spam ring in Vancouver.
Feud -- Gonegambling.com, an online gambling and casino portal, and Mapau, part of the Sunny Group of Casinos, are involved in a dispute that has resulted in GoneGambling's refusal to accept any further advertising from the Sunny Group. The Sunny Group claims that GoneGambling threatened to post a libelous article about the Sunny Group on its Web site unless the Sunny group paid $5,000. Meanwhile, GoneGambling has compiled and posted on its Web site a long argument in defense of its termination of business with the Sunny Group. GoneGambling will lose $7,000 worth of advertising per month as a result.
Thursday, Aug. 28
Smart -- Freedonia Group, an industrial market research firm, predicts that the worldwide demand for smart cards will increase by 11 percent by 2006. This includes the use of memory-only pay telephone cards as well as multifunction smart cards.
Layoffs -- OpenTV, the iTV technology company that bought BettingCorp. last week, is cutting costs by laying off employees at PlayJam, its pay-per-play games channel. The layoff will affect less than 10 people.
Betfair's Fair -- August 28-30, Betfair is hosting the second Chester Racecourse's August Festival of Racing, Food & Drink, which will feature three days of thoroughbred racing as well as cooking demonstrations and 25 fine food exhibitors.
Pick'em -- SPORTSBETTING.com will again offer its $500,000 Gridiron Pick'em contest this NFL season. Contestants pick which teams will win each game on a given week and rank those games according to confidence. The highest score wins a $100 SPORTSBETTING.COM betting account and advances to the second part of the contest, which involves predicting the outcome of the 11 playoff games. Other prizes include trips to the Pro Bowl for the three contestants with the best season score, and $500,000 for any contestant who correctly predicts the outcome of all playoff games in part two.
Wednesday, Aug. 27
Bit from Nevada -- MGM Mirage has enlisted the services of Cox Communications' Hospitality Network Division to deliver in-room high-speed Internet access and digital video-on-demand services to hotel guests at 13 of its casinos. The high-tech services will be installed in 19,000 rooms in Nevada and 1,780 more in Beau Rivage in Biloxi, Mississippi as well as in a newly proposed casino in Detroit. There is currently no word on whether Internet gaming services will be allowed in the rooms.
Research -- A research team at Yale School of Medicine claims to have observed unique patterns of brain activity in male pathological gamblers. The researchers used MRI technology to scan the brains of problem gamblers who were shown videotapes of gambling situations. They say that the neural patterns that emerged closely resemble those of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder. According to principal study investigator Dr. Marc Potenza, "The finding of distinct patterns of neural responses to gambling-related stimuli that are unique from those to other internal emotional states has direct clinical implications and provides a basis for future experimentation in the prevention and treatment of pathological gambling."
New Stuff --
AngelCiti has announced that it will launch a multiplayer poker system at sharkpoker.com.
Tuesday, Aug. 26
Good Neighbors -- Next Monday representatives from racing organizations in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and New Zealand will meet in Hong Kong to sign a multilateral "Good Neighbor Policy" to monitor cross-border wagering between the nations. A race for the inaugural "Good Neighbor Policy Trophy" will be held Sunday to commemorate the event.
Dealing -- Digital television solutions provider and news company NDS Group plc. announced today that it has acquired several assets from French interactive television technology company Interactif Delta Production S.A. For EU200,000, NDS has obtained all of IDP's intellectual property and certain tangible assets and customer contracts. NDS will retain a research and development center in Paris that will provide ongoing services to IDP's existing services.
Sentenced -- David Hampton Tedder was sentenced in a Wisconsin court on Friday to serve five years in prison after having been convicted in June for laundering around $10.7 million for Internet gambling company Gold Medal Sports. Tedder is the seventh man to be convicted in association with Gold Medal Sports, which has its base in Curacao.
Monday, Aug. 25
Changing -- VirtGame Corp. announced Friday that Glenn Wichinsky has been appointed as the company's president and general counsel. Bruce Merati, who was formerly president and CFO, has been appointed as CEO and will also retain his position as CFO. VirtGame Corp. provides server-based networked gaming software solutions, and its management changes are meant to support the company's new growth and commercialization phase.
Bids -- The Independent reports that William Hill and one other U.S. company have placed bids for bookmaker and casino operator Stanley Leisure. Rumors suggest that Stanley Leisure's chairman and largest shareholder, Leonard Steinberg, has grown unhappy with the company's market performance. Last month Steinberg resigned his post as executive chairman in order to take his first non-executive role in nearly 50 years.
European Casino Org. -- Representatives from casino companies in Finland, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Switzerland, the UK, and Austria met in Amsterdam June 25 for the inaugural meeting of the Operators Organization for Europe, a group that intends to give European casino groups a common voice. The meeting resulted in the creation of an interim steering committee that is to formulate the organization's rules, membership criteria, goals, and code of conduct before the next full meeting in October.