[London, ENGLAND] News repurposing operation NewsTakes
announced Thursday that former Reuters chief operating
officer Rodger Armstrong will head up NewsTakes Europe Ltd
from a base in London.
Thirty-six-year-old Armstrong has been appointed vice
president of business development and general manager
of European activities. He will work closely with
NewsTakes’ largest investor, mobile communications
company Orange, which owns 25 percent of NewsTakes.
A highly technical operation, NewsTakes repurposes news
from a variety of sources using a full range of media,
including video, audio, text, graphics and images. It
outputs this news to hand-held and desktop PCs, mobile
phones, PDAs, and set-top boxes, all the time maintaining
what it calls “the integrity of the original content.”
Essentially, NewsTakes expects to make a handsome living
by converting huge quantities of content prepared for
the wired Internet, reshaping it automatically for wireless
devices.
Hans Snook, chief executive officer of Orange, said that
ever since his company’s launch it has taken the position
that wirefree would progressively displace fixed line as
the mainstream carrier of voice communications.
“With our investment in NewsTakes, Orange moves one step
closer to a future where your Orange phone is no longer just
a phone but a personal communications center, placing you
in touch with all the people and information you want,
whenever you want, wherever you want,” said Snook.
One of Newstakes founders, Dr. Gurminder Singh, chief executive,
supervised development of the repurposing technology at Kent
Ridge Digital Labs — an institution that retains a stake
in the venture.
NewsTakes appears to be well-placed to conduct business
globally. In addition to its European connection with
Orange it has a second major investor in Singapore Telecom,
one of Asia’s largest telecommunications companies.
