Nine picked a streaming guy to be its new CEO - Mike Sneesby is the new boss of Nine Entertainment. He is a former telco executive and the head of streaming service Stan.  - He will be in charge of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, but Nine also owns Stan as well as television, radio and other publishing assets.  - The company has been searching for a new CEO since Hugh Marks abruptly resigned in November because of his relationship with a former member of his executive team.  - Sneesby has extensive experience in leading a subscription service, but does not have a background in free-to-air television, radio or publishing. There’s some commentary around that this signals the TV side of Nine is more powerful than the old Fairfax side… But I think it’s a sign that the future is digital and driven by subscription revenues. That’s good news for newspapers.  - Investors value Stan at more than $1 billion. Stan has 2.3 million subscribers. The achievement was met through securing large content deals with US companies such as ViacomCBS, Disney and NBC Universal. There’s also Stan Sport…  - So now Stan is looking for a new boss…  Teams upgrades + speaker  Microsoft’s new Intelligent Speakers deliver its promised meeting room of the future Microsoft to add new shared channels, encryption for calls, webinar features to Teams - Microsoft Ignite is on, and the conference has a few great Teams updates so far  - Teams Connect will allow users from two different organisations a way to create a shared channel to collaborate - - Microsoft is getting into the smart speaker business, but in a very Microsoft way  - Rather than coming after Google, Apple and Amazon in the personal speaker device, Microsoft’s new  Intelligent Speaker is an enterprise product  - The new smart microphone can detect up to ten separate voices and dictate the notes of a meeting, so you can see exactly who did the talking  - The mic can also translate, in case a host or guest is speaking in another language - No pricing as yet Meanwhile, Zoom killing it Zoom (ZM) earnings Q4 2021 - Revenue grew 369% year over year in the quarter that ended on Jan. 31, according to a statement.  It’s too soon to kill off cash  - An analogue story from Woolies, which has walked away a cashless store trial at a small number of its Metro stores - The trial started mid-way through last year, when no one was touching cash and in smaller stores that didn’t have a high amount of cash payments.  - But Woolies will be accepted cash again at those locations   - Woolworths Metro general manager Justin Nolan told iTnews, “While almost all Metro customers choose to pay with cards, cash remains incredibly important to those who don’t for a whole range of reasons we didn't fully appreciate.” - The concerns include: excluding people who don’t have cards or privacy concerns about data harvesting.  - Spotify to overtake Apple on pods  Spotify podcast listeners to top Apple's for the first time in 2021, forecast claims - Market researcher forecast has predicted that Spotify will overtake Apple as the source for podcasts in the US - The company says Apple has been losing podcast listeners to Spotify since it started tracking listens back in 2018 - Currrently, Apple has a 34% market share in the US, Spotify is 23% - with the shift expected later this year  - Ironically, the firm says Spotify’s advantage is a “one stop” experience, of music and podcasts in the one app. Apple previously had a one stop app, before splitting podcasts and music into separate apps a few years ago.    See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.