Singapore’s largest telecoms provider, SingTel, plans to set aside $1.6 billion (S$2 billion) over the next three years for startup acquisitions, it said in an earnings call (via ZDNet). It wasn’t clear on what those acquisitions would be specifically, but going by those it has made in recent years, we can expect the telco to continue focusing on digital content and augmenting its cloud offerings.

SingTel’s earnings for the three months ended March 20123 showed a 33 percent drop in net profit. This was blamed on the divestment of its 30 percent stake in Warid Pakistan, which cost it a one-time $180 million (S$225 million).

Not counting the divestment, SingTel’s underlying net loss was 2 percent, as the telco faces “significant industry challenges”, it said. It noted that it plans to reverse this trend by continuing to invest in “next-generation growth engines” in the digital industry.

Its earnings report showed that its digital investments are paying off. Out of a total $1.34 billion (S$1.68 billion) in revenue for the quarter, most of it comes from providing mobile and Internet services, which brought in $393 million (S$491 million) and $335 million (S$419 million), respectively. Its manages services arm, NCS, brought in $303 million (S$378 million).

Mobile and Internet services grew 4 percent each in the quarter over the corresponding quarter a year prior, while NCS shrank 4 percent.

Meanwhile, its digital business which includes ad network Amobee, was only responsible for $19 million (S$24 million), but showed promising growth of 156 percent. This is over a much smaller base, of course, but with growth of its other businesses slowing down considerably, SingTel’s shift in focus towards growth areas shows its intention to turn things around.

SingTel’s plans to elevate itself above being a “dumb pipe” telco can be tracked back to the major restructuring of its business arms last year. It divided itself into three pillars called Consumer, ICT and Digital Life.

The first two focus on consumer and enterprise segments, respectively, but the Digital Life arm is most representative of the change. The division was set up as a reaction to over-the-top competition from third party content providers, and SingTel said Digital Life was going to compete head on, providing smart TV, digital magazines and local content.

Some of the acquisitions its made in that direction include restaurant review sites, Hungrygowhere and Eatability, and photo app Pixable.

SingTel has also been bullish as a VC. In 2010, it set up a separate venture arm called Innov8 to specifically look at acquisitions that would boost its current play in the telecoms arena. Innov8 was set up with an initial fund size of $160 million (S$200 million), and has since acquired firms like mobile ad companies Amobee and Adjitsu in 2012. Amobee cost it a cool $321 million.

Amobee CEO, Trevor Healy said then, of the Adjitsu acquisition, that the 3D technology company was attractive because SingTel’s Asian base is particularly receptive to 3D media.

Innov8 has also raised rounds in startups like mobile ad exchange Nexage and Chinese game publisher Yodo.

SingTel runs telecoms operations in other countries in the region, like Optus in Australia. It has significant stakes in other carriers like Globe in The Philippines (44 percent), Bharti in India (32 percent) and Telkomsel in Indonesia (35 percent). It announced that its combined subscriber base grew 9 percent to hit 468 million users in the fourth quarter, compared with the corresponding period a year prior.

The idea of using Augmented Reality to bring dead-tree media to life is arguably very 2010, and back then it often hugged the line of gimmickry. But with the hype being generated by Google Glass, AR technology seems destined to be brought back into focus. Meanwhile, companies like Layer and Metaio have built platforms to help brands create experiences that bring real-world objects to life, not least print campaigns, by overlaying digital content via the view finder of a smartphone.

Today UK startup VirtualMob is officially launching its own Augmented Reality self-service — Point-at-Me (PAM) — which mixes drag ‘n’ drop content creation, e-commerce, and analytics in a bid to make it even easier for companies to get in on the AR action.

Running in private Beta over the last month, PAM aims to lower the barriers for brands who want to build Augmented Reality-enabled mobile apps and campaigns. It combines a CMS platform to let them create AR experiences without the need to code, which can then be accessed by consumers through the accompanying PAM smartphone app or by being integrated into the brand’s own app. In that sense, one way to think of VirtualMob’s proposition might be a WordPress for AR — and certainly this is about democratising access to the technology for content creators through ease-of-use and reduced cost.

The PAM platform itself — which while in Beta has already been used by over 100 customers including The Trump Ocean Club Panama, Cartier, Victoria’s Secret, Time Inc., The Waldorf Astoria, Cartier, Hyundai, and Unilever — is designed to be self-service, requiring little to no technical knowledge by employing a drag ‘n’ drop UI. It’s particularly suited to bringing a print campaign (or other real-world static content) to life by augmenting it with digital content, such as images, video, links and, crucially, e-commerce functionality.

So, for example, you might see an advert for a watch in a dead-tree magazine prompting you to fire up the PAM app (or the brand’s own app with PAM integrated) and point your phone at the image. From here you’d see see additional information like where to buy, features, cost etc., along with any relevant call to actions.

But what makes this especially useful for brands employing the technology is that all of these interactions are measurable, and indeed PAM comes with analytics. This includes things like click through rate, location/time, and source media, thus bringing a degree of accountability to print campaigns that isn’t normally possible, helping brands prioritise their marketing budgets.

“Brands love the analytics part, as they spend millions on printed media, but have difficulties turning that into something they can measure or convert into hits via print,” says VirtualMob co-founder Chaya Jadhav.

Founded in 2011, the company is self-funded to the tune of $500,000 and is in the process of raising an external round of funding. To that end, I’m also told that the PAM platform will be compatible with Google Glass.

Well, there’s a surprise.

Yahoo is hoping to bring in more advertiser dollars with two new units that it’s announcing today as part of the Digital Content NewFronts.

Vice President of Product and Media Mike Kerns pitched the new formats as the flip side to the front page redesign that the company rolled out in February. Now that Yahoo has improved its consumer experience (or at least one of the main parts of the consumer experience), he said “the next big push” will include new ad products.

“The main message is, we want to commit to investing in new advertising experiences,” Kerns said.

The first units are Yahoo Stream Ads — as the name implies, they’re going to be be sponsored posts that show up in a stream of content (across desktops/laptops, smartphones, and tablets) including the news stories in the new Yahoo mobile app. In other words, this is Yahoo’s take on the current excitement around native ads.

Kerns described the Stream Ads as taking “a very broad approach,” allowing the company to “let the market and let data tell us” how to refine the formats. However, he did say that he wants to keep the pricing as simple as possible, and that he’s committed to ensuring that the ads “mirror the content.”

The other unit, meanwhile, is going to be something a little more traditional — a big “billboard” that sits on top of the Yahoo front page for an entire day. With the announcement, Kerns said Yahoo is covering “both ends of the advertising spectrum.” The native ads should be accessible to a broad swath of the advertisers, while the billboard is aimed at bigger companies with deeper pockets.

When I asked how the new ads will affect the consumer experience, Kerns didn’t say specifically, but he did note that’s something Yahoo will be tracking — specifically how the ads affect the consumer engagement numbers on its properties.

The company has already been talking to some advertisers about its Stream Ads, so Kerns predicted that the first campaigns will start running this week. And while it hasn’t talked to advertisers about the billboard unit, Kerns said it probably won’t take long to get campaigns up-and-running there, too.

Another simple but neat Evernote hack that came out of the 24-hour Disrupt NY Hackathon earlier today was Squirrel. Created by coder duo Zainab Ebrahimi and Jabari Bell, the hack turns articles that Evernote readers have saved for reading later into a personalised newsletter. So, unlike the average email newsletter, Squirrel is populated with content the user actually wants to read. A sort of anti-spam if you like.

Bell explained he uses Evernote for saving articles to read later but wanted to come up with a neat self-reminder that resurfaces content which he hasn’t gotten round to reading yet. The problem Squirrel is attacking is the sheer volume of new stuff that’s clamouring for our attention online, drowning out the good stuff we genuinely want to pay attention to.

Squirrel creates both a neat summary of articles an Evernote user has earmarked, and acts as a gentle reminder to dive in and read them. With so much digital content being generated, great stuff easily gets buried, said Bell. Squirrel digs it back up. (The name of the hack is a clear reference to how squirrels store nuts for eating later by burying them in the ground — yet oftentimes forget where they buried them so never end up getting to eat them.)

The Squirrel hack lets users set the frequency with which they want to receive an email newsletter, and presents around 10-15 articles per email. While the duo have used Evernote’s API for their hack, it’s easy to envisage other cloud storage services being plugged in. And with so much content out there stored in people’s personal clouds the whole content rediscovery space is looking pretty hot. Add to that, apps like Yahoo-acquired Summ.ly which are designed to help people reduce content clutter and Squirrel’s hack is definitely tapping into a ‘reload my information/information overload’ trend.

Here’s Squirrel’s on stage presentation:

The European Commission believes that, alongside the rise of smartphones, tablets and other TV replacements, by 2016 connected TVs could be used in the majority of European homes — up from around 40.4 million today. Today it released a Green Paper to lay the groundwork for how it might cope with that.

To be clear, this is not a re-writing of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, the basic set of rules first introduced in 2010 covering areas single-market convergence, although it could lead to that. Initially, the purpose of the Green Paper will be to get a better handle on an area that is rapidly changing with the boom in mobile broadband, the rise of tablets and video apps, those connected TVs and more. It’s part of Kroes’ wider Digital Agenda strategy, which has covered areas like addressing the digital divide, the role of regulation in childrens content, cybersecurity, tech brain drain and more.

As part of the Green Paper, the EC seeks feedback on things like how TV is watched, the limitations of digital content distributed on a per-country basis, exclusivity deals for films and other media, and whether self-regulation (used widely today) is doing enough — issues that could potentially impact, among others, device makers like Samsung, LG and (perhaps!) Apple; streaming companies like Amazon and Netflix; and publishers/creators.

Neelie Kroes, the outspoken Commission VP who oversees this area, focuses her attention on connected TVs specifically today: “Connected TV is the next big thing in the creative and digital worlds,” she is expected to note in a statement today.

But Kroes also acknowledges that even if it’s not a huge LG set in a TV room that will be the lever for how things transform, the evolution is certainly an issue regardless. “Convergence between sectors means people can enjoy a wider choice of great content – but it also creates disruptions and challenges. We need a converged and EU-wide debate to help deal with these changes.” Indeed, figures from Cisco’s most recent Visual Networking Index, a huge study it puts out annually, mobile video consumption worldwide exceeded 50% for the first time last year and shows no sign of slowing down, with Europe accounting for over 20% of all global mobile traffic.

Part of the issue in Europe is that, at the moment, there are some cross purposes at work.

For example, when it comes to content, deals are often cut on a per-country basis, which makes it hard to then charge and consume content across borders — let alone license content. On another level, there are national regulators trying to tackle issues of cross-media ownership that may not harmonize with those of other countries. There is also the thorny issue of standards. Is it really the role of the EC to get involved in areas like whether we should be sold HbbTV or MHP hardware? The endorsements that regulators once made years ago for mobile TV seemed back then, and especially now, pretty hollow considering that nothing took off, and in fact what people love to use today are apps that stream on iOS, Android and other platforms.

Still, given that we are slowly marching to a new era of content consumption it’s useful to start laying some ideas on to the table, and if it means that I might be able to watch the latest series of Borgen, with subtitles, right when it gets released in Denmark, all the better.

(Link to the Green Paper will get posted here)

Last year, author Tim Ferriss turned to BitTorrent to market his newest book, the Four-Hour Chef, when the biggest bookseller in the U.S., Barnes & Noble, refused to stock the Amazon-published title. Ferriss’ campaign proved a success, with the book selling 250,000 copies on the back of some 2 million promotional content bundles — chapters of the book and supplementary materials — downloaded on BitTorrent. Now BitTorrent is banking on that success to try to get more authors on to its site.

Playing on its former reputation as a place to pick up illegally distributed content, BitTorrent today published an informal how-to guide for authors, encouraging them to “hack publishing” and market their books like startups, complete with “iterative release schedule and spreadable, targeted content.”

While BitTorrent does not intend to be a publisher or distributor of books itself, it sees a role in helping authors break down their work to promote their main product in a different way. It suggests that chapters should be thought of as tracks from an album.

“This book-as-album strategy gives authors like Ferriss a significant advantage. Releasing chapters as singles creates a continuous news cycle during pre-launch promotion. It effectively creates radio play; increasing the chances that you’ll get heard with sample content. At the same time, it provides the flexibility to micro-target: using different chapters to reach and activate different readers.”

It’s also a sign of how authors are increasingly taking a bigger role in general in promoting their work in a digital content world.

BitTorrent’s focus on authors is part of a multi-year mission at the company become a go-to place for legit content creators to host and distribute legit work. A good amount of effort has been put into areas like video and music. A deal with DJ Shadow last year pioneered a revenue-sharing model, in which free DJ Shadow music content came bundled with other products inserted by paying marketers, part of a content package the company offers called the BitTorrent Bundle. Along with that, it has launched a file-storage and sending service called SoShare, geared at extra-large, media-rich files, to help those in the creative community better collaborate.

And books have also played a role. Matt Mason, BitTorrent’s VP of marketing, notes that a partnership with the Internet Archive, has “over 1 million legal and licensed books available.”

Most people out there don’t have the profile of Tim Ferriss, who had already made a name for himself with two previous books, Four-Hour Workweek and Four-Hour Body, before moving on to the Four-Hour Chef. BitTorrent notes that Ferriss released the first chapter of his book, along with 680MB of behind-the-scenes content on BitTorrent, using six promotions over 60 days (yes this sounds a little like a fad diet). This content, BitTorrent says, was downloaded over 2 million times. As a result of that, 293,936 clicked on to the book’s trailer YouTube; 327,555 clicked on to the author’s website — making BitTorrent its biggest traffic generator; and 880,009 clicked on to the book’s Amazon page: 880,009, resulting in 250,000 copies of the book itself getting sold.

You can argue that his success on BitTorrent was more due to Ferriss’ earlier fame than the BitTorrent distribution model. But for those willing to rethink how to market their books, it could be an easy enough investment to make anyway: Matt Mason, VP of marketing for BitTorrent, points out to TechCrunch that all of the Bundles that BitTorrent has piloted to take have been a “zero cost” to the content creators.

Indeed, it seems that, for now, the main purpose of growing the population of content creators on the site is to grow BitTorrent’s scale and profile more than direct revenue sources. BitTorrent itself is not necessarily interested in taking on a bigger content producing role for itself in the process. ”BitTorrent is not the publisher or distributor,” says Mason. “[But] the publishing industry has changed. Launching a book today is much like being your own startup. BitTorrent’s role, specifically the role of the BitTorrent Bundle, is to offer a new tool for content creators to engage with a mass audience. The BitTorrent Bundle hands the power of a torrent over to the content creators.”