Roundup: Textbook publishers strike iPad deals, AOL beats expectations

Here’s the latest action:

Textbook publishers making iPad deals — We’ve already covered Inkling, one of the startups moving textbooks onto Apple’s new device. Now the Wall Street Journal looks at ScrollMotion, another company developing iPad textbook applications.

AOL earnings beat low expectations — This was the company’s first earnings report since it spun off from Time Warner. On one level, things looked pretty bad for chief executive Tim Armstrong — the company’s already weak revenue fell across the board. However, analyst expectations were very low, so AOL still managed to beat them.

5th Cell’s Scribblenauts game sells 1 million copies — The Nintendo DS game, which shipped last fall, is a continuation of developer 5th Cell’s commitment to original games rather than licensed properties. It seemed like a risky bet, but the game was lauded with awards and strong reviews, and is now reporting strong sales.

Is Google News bad for newspapers? — Entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban says it is, because it dilutes their brands. It’s a controversial argument, but Cuban added the caveat that he’s talking about established brands here, not upstart organizations like, say, VentureBeat.

Salesforce.com announces a visual editor for business processes — Now companies can create simple business applications by just building a decision tree — there’s no coding required. Naturally, Salesforce says one of the biggest audiences for the product could be sales and marketing departments, where it would be easy to create a detailed outline of how to handle sales or customer service calls.

Sales picking up “across the board” for Cisco — The company’s net income is up 25 percent, beating analyst predictions. Chief executive John Chambers said business is improving in “almost all areas” and that Cisco plans to hire between 2,000 and 3,000 new employees in the coming quarters.