Akamai

Due to the large volume of news generated over the past few days, we are covering today's stories in abbreviated round-up/summary form:

CBS Interactive Music Group is expanding its "Live On Letterman" concert series, signing several major artists to perform extended sets after their appearances on its late-night talk show. 

• DirecTV is banking on 3D video of women surfers to help differentiate its programming lineup from pay TV rivals. The DBS provider signed Union Square Agency to produce a 3D TV series that will take viewers behind the scenes of the professional female surfing circuit. "Gone Until December" is scheduled to debut this summer on n3D, DirecTV's 24-hour 3D network. More

• After hitting the milestone of 1 million users, social-TV check-in service GetGlue is comparing itself to Web giants IMDB, Fandango, TV Guide and Amazon.com. The company boasts that it has also hit the milestone of generating 100 million data points, which represent "connections between people and the entertainment they've consumed, revealing insights about tastes and dynamics of entertainment consumption." GetGlue says it generates as many as 10 check-ins per second during primetime, and that it sees 500,000 new unique data points on an average day. More

• Miso, another social-TV check-in service, upgraded its iPhone app. Users can now use a five-star rating system for TV episodes and movies. It also added a push notification system that allows viewers to receive emails when their friends check in to a show, and it updated the navigation bar on the app. Miso recently struck a deal with Starz to help promote its "Camelot" series. Viewers that use Miso to check in to "Camelot" can earn badges based on the show.  

• Motion-control technology firm Hillcrest Labs raised another $5.5 million, according to an Securities and Exchange Commission filing. While Hillcrest hasn't yet struck deals with pay TV providers to deploy its Loop remote, it has licensed its Freespace technology to LG Electronics, Universal Electronics, Logitech and other CE manufacturers for use in connected TVs and devices. Hillcrest, which in 2009 settled a patent infringement suit filed against Nintendo for allegedly using its technology in its Wii controllers, didn't name its new investors in the filing. 

• Among the "TV Everywhere" technologies Akamai Technologies and Synacor touted at a joint demonstration at the NAB convention in Las Vegas this week is a "viewing continuity" feature – or allowing viewers watching video on a PC to pause a scene, and resume play on a tablet. But the companies don't yet have a joint multiplatform video product to pitch TV programmers and distributors, noting in an announcement that the new features "are not yet commercially available." Synacor operates a Web video portal for Charter Communications, and has been shopping a TV Everywhere authentication and authorization solution to other providers. More

Online video platform provider, Ooyala, on Wednesday unveiled an iPhone app called OoyalaDirect that it bills as making it easy for video publishers who use its service to record and publish high-quality videos directly from their smartphones.

Webcasting specialist, iStreamPlanet, said Monday that it has been tapped by Microsoft to help deliver live streaming and on-demand coverage of the Wimbledon Championships for NBC Sports' Wimbledon Live service on NBCSports.com. According to the company, it will manage the encoding of live coverage of the tennis championship, as well as design and deploy a custom Microsoft Silverlight-based "media experience" that will leverage Microsoft Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS) Smooth Streaming adaptive bit rate technology (adapts the video stream in accordance with the limitations of the end-user's broadband connection).

Adobe announced Wednesday that over 20 companies are "embracing" its recently announced open framework for building media players (note: for more on the new framework, see the article posted on itvt.com April 21st). The company bills the framework, code-named "Strobe," as helping establish an open industry standard for media players and as offering production-ready software components to streamline the development of custom media players, thus reducing the time content publishers spend creating their own playback technologies.