Author Archive
January 30, 2008
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Yahoo will be laying off about a 1000 people. Alley Insider says Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is basically asking investors to be patient for another year, according to Alley Insider.
eBay has announced big changes in the company’s fee structure and reputation system. The company will drop its listing fees, but charge more when an item’s actually sold. The shifts will hurt sellers of low-priced items the most, because commissions will increase by almost 60% for items under $25.
Paul McGuinness has been managing U2 for thirty years, and he thinks companies including Google, Apple, Nokia, Microsoft, Yahoo are the knowing beneficiaries of “countless tiny crimes.”
An EU court decided that ISP’s do NOT have to hand over the identities of people accused of pirating music through peer to peer networks.
Firefox continues to gnaw at Internet Explorer’s lead.
Digg has just under 3 million users, and has roughly tripled over the past year. TechCrunch points out that the Digg site actually gets a lot more visitors than this.
Videoegg just announced that it sold $1.5 million of advertising for its partners on Facebook over the past five months. But that amounts to about $2000 per application per month. Not much to make a living on.
The analyst who touched off a firestorm by saying unsold iPhones were piling up in stores now thinks the root of this is a lot of unlocked phones, rather than unsold inventory.
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January 29, 2008
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Over the weekend, key news sources like Ars Technica and Tech Crunch took new music service Q-Trax at their word when they claimed to have licenses from all the major labels. Then the LA Times revealed that this wasn’t true – but the Times of London STILL believed the company. Finally the BBC verified it was all hogwash.
Rumors I recently discussed of Windows 7 shipping early are just wishful thinking.
What do you do for an encore after Technorati? Launch a HotOrNot for websites. Yow!
Rumor is that much bigger layoff’s are coming to Yahoo than previously believed. Here’s your handy cheat sheet on the bottom-line ramifications.
At last – the pen is mightier than the mouse.
Lego turns fifty, and Google celebrates. As well they should – their first drive array was built around Lego’s – and let’s not forget their office art in New York.
The robber barons may have been rich – but not even they could give their passengers the convenience of broadband wireless networking. A century later WiFi finally comes to the iron horse.
At last – a flashlight that can start your campfire and cook your marshmallows!
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January 28, 2008
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Where are all the iPhones? Apple says they sold 3.7 million. AT&T says they activated less than two million. Only a few hundred thousand are in Europe. There’s no way all the others have been unlocked. So one analyst thinks they could be piling up, unsold, in stores.
The gaming industry is on fire (in a good way).
First Rupert said the Journal would be free online, then it seemed maybe not – now we have the final word. The Wall Street Journal will not only remain a pay site, but the price is going up.
It’s only been a few days, but billions have already been bid in the FCC’s giant 700Mhz spectrum auction. This solid background piece will tell you everything you need to know about the auction.
The Forbes Midas List is out – a Hot 100 of venture capitalists. Or a Hot Less-Than-100 if you don’t think practicing lawyers and investment bankers qualify as being venture capitalists. The peculiar methodology is kind of explained here and here.
Here they are – the books that make you dumb (and the ones that make you smart)
Hackers are attacking the scientologists. A Dutch school is some early collateral damage.
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January 25, 2008
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The music industry has released a new report in which they call for ISP’s to become their servants in the war on piracy. This has already happened in France and Belgium. AT&T alone seems ready to sign up in the US.
The MacBook Air is getting generally positive, but not quite gushing reviews in Newsweek, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal.
Your local data center could be making art, or a horrific mess out of its cabling. Or several horrific messes.
If you’re a capitalist, Bill Gates (of all people) wants you to be a nicer person. He’s inspired by books including the Bottom of the Pyramid, the Mystery of Capital, and The Bottom Billion.
At least part of the Digg community is in revolt over changes in its algorithm that prevent group log-rolling (among other things).
Yahoo may be for sale (even though it doesn’t want to be).
Holy flying WiFi, Batman! American Airlines and Southwest prepare to plug their passengers into the Internet.
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January 24, 2008
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Last FM is giving free on-demand access to most the commercial catalog of music. Until you want to listen to that song for the fourth time.
The company behind Word Press is raising a ton of money at a huge valuation from investors including the New York Times to keep pressin’ out them words.
The long-awaited auction of 700 MHz spectrum begins today. Some think Google will just place a token bid, but some moves that they’ve made make them look quite serious about this. You can check the daily progress of the auction on the FCC’s site.
After Warner Brother’s lined up with Blu-Ray, HD-DVD is getting crushed.
Blizzard just announced that World of Warcraft has officially passed 10 million subscribers world-wide.
Virgin Galactic announced their first passenger space ship. Daily Tech has the details.
The Super Nintendo emulator for the iPhone is in beta.
It’s usually hard for guys to buy clothes for their girlfriends, but she’s sure to love a modular LED dress.
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January 10, 2008
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Earlier this week the Financial Times said Paramount would be dumping the standard after Warner Brothers got behind Blu-Ray. Even without Paramount, Blu-Ray now has a lock on seventy percent of Hollywood’s output. So it’s still dark days for HD-DVD, so I’d start saving your pennies for a Blu-Ray player.
Frontline was a high-profile startup set to be a major bidder in this month’s spectrum auction. RCR Wireless broke the news that Frontline was calling it quits. Spectrum bidders were required to make a hundred and twenty eight million dollar deposit. Apparently this is a lot of money even for billionaires like backer John Doerr, as TechCrunch notes in its epitaph on the company.
Comcast annouced plans bring 100 megabit speeds to certain areas over the next two years. Comcast also said it would expand its video on demand service from three hundred titles to about six thousand, and finally, Comcast launched something called Fancast, which hosts free episodes of several shows which is available to anyone over the Web – not just Comcast subscribers.
Viacom will allow full episodes from networks including Comedy Central, MTV, and Nickelodeon appear on Comcast’s Fancast site, as well as sites including Dailymotion, GoFish, and Veoh.
Panasonic announced that a new line of its high-def TV’s would come with built-in access to YouTube videos. A year ago, Sony announced sets with connections to its Grouper video services, as well as videos on AOL and Yahoo.
YouKu is China’s leading video sharing site, and they just announced they’re serving 100 million videos per day.
Liveblogging is what happens when a blogger types out the real-time minutia of an event, as Engadget did for Philips at CES speech. You can also try dead blogging, like one made from the letters and journal entries of an English soldier in the first world war.
The Beertender is a refrigerated dispenser of draft beer from four-liter mini-kegs. Big news, Americans – it will be coming to the US in March.
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January 8, 2008
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Panasonic unveiled a 150-inch plasma screen. The Guardian tells us it weighs five hundred pounds, and is best viewed from thirty feet away. Eric Savitz at Baron’s has a full write-up on the talk.
Bill Gates announced that Microsoft would be teaming up with longtime partner NBC to webcast the Olympics this summer.
Apple is close to offering most of the movie catalog that you can find at Blockbuster via iTunes.
You will be able to buy DRM free music from Sony, but they’re not going to make it easy for you.
The New York Times says tech news giant CNET is a target for a corporate takeover.
Wikia search isn’t getting rave reviews from anyone. Search Engine Journal tells us that most of the user contribution tools aren’t even ready yet.
Microsoft is working on a new version of its mobile OS that sounds a little iPhone-esque.
Engadget got to test drive a curved display from Alienware.
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January 7, 2008
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Blu-Ray scores a big win in its battle with HD-DVD by getting Warner Brothers into its camp. Looks like Sony might have paid up big time to get them. HD-DVD coalition Toshiba is bummed.
Sony-BMG is about to become the last label on earth to sell unlocked music files. Expect to see them on Amazon.
Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has mixed emotions about the outcome of an experiment in optional payments with an album he produced.
Internet advertising is starting to exceed TV advertising in some parts of Europe.
Intel has bailed on the One Laptop Per Child project. Looks like they’re more interested in pushing their own cheap PC.
Looks like the 787 is vulnerable to flying hackers. Boeing says it’s no big deal.
It doesn’t take a hacker to spy on Sears customers. It looks like Sears makes it incredibly easy to do this.
CES is on. With its amazing history of launches, we can hope for things even better than Skype on the PSP or a DVR in the Xbox.
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January 2, 2008
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Australia announces a national porn filtering policy that people can opt out of. TechCrunch thinks this puts the country on a par with China as far as censorship goes. Others worry about Internet speeds slowing, and access to health information.
CD sales crater enormously – down 21% during the holidays.
Meanwhile movie sales are flat – and the world is waiting out the latest format wars.
Maybe its time for the media moguls to buy tourniquet pants.
LG Phillips readies to ship 84-inch LCD multi-touch screens.
The US Air Force is getting juice from North America’s largest solar plant.
Vonage must be happy 2007 is finally over, as it settles the last of many patent suits.
Want to get every episode of WebbAlert automatically delivered to your iTunes software, or another great player? Click here!
December 31, 2007
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Walmart’s online video service is gone. It was six days before anyone noticed.
Meanwhile Apple charms Disney into joining its upcoming video rental service.
Apple is meanwhile wants to patent the idea of using cell phones to skip lines. The ramifications of this could be quite broad.
The Netscape Navigator is no more. Not that anyone was using it anyway.
The music industry may be trying to criminalize CD ripping. If true, this shows abhorrent greed. But people may be misinterpreting things.
Americans are now making a huge amount of their own content.
YouTube reveals 2007’s Most Memorable Online Videos. The Water Buffaloes are at the top of the class, which includes this unforgettable moment.
Virus makers are targeting people hungry for news about the Bhutto assassination (as well as a lot of other topics). This happened after the tsunami as well.
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