Articles by Angela Gunn

Yahoo puts forth better-than-expected earnings, but no 'economic predictions'

By Angela Gunn on July 21, 2009, 9:23 PM

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In her company's earnings report on Tuesday, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz declared herself not to be in the economic-indicator business: "Overall we are seeing less fear in the market, but it's too early to call... We'll leave the economic predictions to others." The company is busy, they explained, being "Internet kingmakers and the center of the online ecosystem."

Big talk? It got bigger. Bartz said on the call that Yahoo is the largest online media company in the world, with one out of two Internet users using one Yahoo property or another. When news breaks, "our home page continues to be the big dog. And in that kingmaker role, Bartz (relating a recent event in which a link on the Yahoo front page drove nearly 9 million viewers to a story on the New York Times in under three hours) "in the end we work with [news] publishers, not against them" -- a not-so veiled reference to Google News' ongoing conflicts with news outlets that feel that that service's aggregation goes too far.

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The real meaning behind Microsoft's unexpected Linux kernel drop

By Angela Gunn on July 21, 2009, 10:28 AM

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The most vivid headline on yesterday's news that Microsoft is releasing various Linux kernel modules under the GNU Public License may not have been the most accurate. That would be InfoWorld's "Linux slips into Microsoft's warm, deadly embrace," which cast an agreeable horror-movie glow over the proceedings.

Fun stuff, but despite Randall C. Kennedy's fine and impassioned argument that this is all an embrace-and-extend plot to allow Hyper-V to feast on the blood of the open-source movement, that's probably not where things are heading.

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What's Now: The Yahoo makeover, about a year late

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 21, 2009, 9:16 AM

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Yahoo begins beta rollout of new front page

Tuesday, July 21, 2009 • After what feels like a Google-length testing period, Yahoo is rolling out access to its fresh-and-widgety front page redesign to US users, to be followed within a week or thereabouts with rollouts in the UK, France, and India. The design features a configurable "my favorites" bar with several dozen applications that can fly out and preview content above the main screen, improved localization, slightly smaller type, and the ubiquitous purple.

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Barnes & Noble launches its own e-bookstore

By Angela Gunn on July 21, 2009, 8:59 AM

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It's an odd time to launch an e-bookstore, in the wake of Amazon's Orwellian book-deletion shenanigans as we are, but Barnes & Noble is jumping in with both feet. The new Barnes & Noble eBookstore launched Monday with over 700,000 titles, leapfrogging it past Amazon's efforts.

The store allows downloads to readers for the iPhone/iPod Touch and the BlackBerry, along with Windows and Mac machines; whatever the reader, it's optimized to the .pdb and .prc file formats. (The readers are free and come with free books -- including, if you register, a Merriam-Webster dictionary, plus access to half a million public-domain books from Google.)

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Texas Instruments ticks up (sequentially, anyway) in Q2

By Angela Gunn on July 20, 2009, 8:59 PM

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If you look at Texas Instruments' year-over-year results -- ouch, down 27%. If you look at the numbers sequentially -- hey, up 18%, breaking a five-quarter slide. So, based on what we've all been through over the last year, what would you make of TI's numbers?

Texas Instruments took an optimistic but cautious tone on its earnings call, announcing net earnings of $260 million and an EPS of 20 cents, beating expectations. In addition, the company set forth its first predictions for Q3: revenue of between $2.5 and $2.8 billion, with earnings per share of between 29 and 39 cents.

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Microsoft releases Office for Mac SP2, offers free trial of full package

By Angela Gunn on July 20, 2009, 5:45 PM

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Fourteen months after the previous service pack (and six months after giving the world a peek at Macworld), Microsoft on Monday rolled out Office 2008 for Mac SP2. There's still no sign of the promised Entourage upgrade to Exchange Web Services (EWS), but fans of Office Live Workspace and SharePoint ought to be pleased.

Document Connection, which improves users' ability to work with documents on both of those collaboration platforms, is perhaps the biggest addition in SP2. It engendered not only a major effort to bring Microsoft's current vision of Web-based collaboration into the Mac world, but a push to get Office right with Safari 4. Those improvements are also part of SP2.

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Up Front: Patent scuffles, psychos with iPod Shuffles, and earnings kerfuffles

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 20, 2009, 9:16 AM

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Microsoft-Yahoo: Carl Icahn weighs in

Morning of July 20, 2009 • Still no official word on that rumored deal between Microsoft and Yahoo on the advertising front, but Reuters phoned up one of the heavy hitters and asked him for his thoughts last week. It's probably no surprise that principal Yahoo investor Carl Icahn, though not willing to discuss anything current, still seems inclined to make a deal -- even if it wasn't the deal he tried to broker for the two companies in 2008.

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Who needs an Emmy when you've got clicks?

By Angela Gunn on July 17, 2009, 8:31 PM

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This episode of Recovery is brought to you by caffeine, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems (with apologies to Homer Simpson).

Fun fact: The Simpsons -- the longest-running sitcom in history and arguably one of the most formative -- has never been nominated for a Best Comedy Emmy. I've got a theory that if the television voters had done so about 18 years ago, they wouldn't currently be in the embarrassing position of nominating for their awards "shows" that don't give a damn about television. Hear me out.

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Elance data breaches by parties unknown (but possibly Ukranian)

By Angela Gunn on July 17, 2009, 9:34 AM

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A data breach affecting users' contact information has been uncovered at Elance, an online contractor-gig site used by many tech professionals. A notice was sent out to various registered members and reposted to a Trust & Safety page of the site on Thursday.

According to the notice, some of the information in the pilfered data table -- which includes names, phone numbers and the like but not bank information or Social Security numbers -- has turned up on an unrelated site called outsourcingroom.com.

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IBM attributes impressive Q2 to margins, margins, margins

By Angela Gunn on July 17, 2009, 9:32 AM

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Mark Loughridge on Thursday dispensed with the introductory pleasantries; the IBM CFO dived right into the Q2 earnings per share with his second sentence. Considering how that sentence panned out, analysts probably would have forgiven him for prefacing his prepared statement with booya!

IBM blasted past expectations, delivering earnings of $2.32 per share -- a company-best EPS for a first, second, or third quarter (adjusting for stock splits), and up 35 cents year-over-year. Q2 net income was $3.1 billion, up 12% year-over-year -- impressive considering total revenues were off 13%, or 7% adjusting for currency fluctuations. Public-sector spending was once again the fastest-growing business sector at 7%.

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What's Now: Society's to blame for the pilfering of Twitter

By Angela Gunn on July 17, 2009, 9:29 AM

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Twitter, Google Apps, TechCrunch -- Why can't everyone be to blame for that hack?

The morning after the morning after... • Watching TechCrunch spool out those 300-odd documents lifted from Twitter has been fascinating; the two companies have been talking throughout the process about what is and isn't reasonable to reveal. Very socially-networked of them, as TheNextWeb points out. (Or, says Biz Stone, not.) Now, whom shall we keelhaul for all this?

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Visto and Research In Motion (finally) lay down their arms

By Angela Gunn on July 17, 2009, 9:03 AM

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A patent war that stretched over two continents and over three years is set to conclude this week as Research in Motion, purveyor of the BlackBerry, agreed to settle a long-running case originally filed by Visto, a wireless e-mail firm based in California.

According to a (rather terse) jointly issued press release, "The key terms of the settlement involve RIM receiving a perpetual and fully-paid license on all Visto patents, a transfer of certain Visto intellectual property, a one-time payment by RIM of US $267.5 million, and the parties executing full and final releases in respect of all outstanding worldwide litigation."

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Google reports Q2 profit, says market 'appears to have stabilized'

By Angela Gunn on July 16, 2009, 6:55 PM

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Admitting after that the fact that "a quarter ago we had no idea where the bottom was," Google said on Thursday that the bottom was apparently a quarter ago. The company reported its lowest ever growth rate for revenues in its recently ended second quarter, expanding just 3% year-over-year.

The company reported revenues of $5.52 billion for the second quarter. Operating income (GAAP) was $1.87 billion, up about $290 million year over year, but representing a larger percentage (34% vs 29%) of revenues compared to the previous year. Net income (again, GAAP) was $1.48 billion compared to $1.25 billion in Q2'08. And EPS was... insert drum roll here... $4.66, compared to $3.92 last year, and about 25 cents/share above analysts' predictions.

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Can Linux manage updates and upgrades more easily than Windows?

By Angela Gunn on July 16, 2009, 9:31 AM

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Our continuing Linux-vs.-Windows series turns now to the absolute basics -- the most universal, and occasionally most important, task you will undertake with any computer. Whatever software and OS you use, whatever you do with the machine, sooner or later you're going to install, update or upgrade something. How does the process compare on the two platforms?

(Again, Mac OS folk, you're not the topic of discussion here. If you want to comment on the .dmg experience or other aspects of tending your Apple orchards, please do so in comments, civilly.)

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What's Now: Amazon sued, Nokia not skidding so much, and Dell plunges

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 16, 2009, 9:00 AM

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Nokia earnings sequentially up, at least

Morning of Thursday, July 16, 2009 • One of the most wince-inducing earnings calls for reporters in recent months has been Nokia's, but things seem to be a tiny bit brighter at the Finnish phone firm as sales rose 7% in Q2 from the previous three months. They're still down 25% year-over-year, of course, but company officials Thursday said they believe the market for mobile devices to be "bottoming out." (The company still chose to revise its earlier target of raising its market share; now the company says it aims to maintain that share at 2008 levels.) Earnings per share were likewise down year-to-year (65.5%) but up sequentially (233.3%).

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Security and the e-textbooks proposal

By Angela Gunn on July 15, 2009, 7:00 PM

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I have a test of nerves for you. I want you to go grab $200 in twenties and some plastic wrap. (Look in the kitchen for the plastic wrap; you're on your own for the cash.) Wrap the cash in the plastic. Now find a kid, preferably one of about elementary-school age. An assortment of kids of various ages is better, if you have multiple instances of plastic-wrapped bills, though the ease of finding extra cash around the house is of course inversely related to the number of kids present.

Each child should come naturally equipped with a backpack, which they use to haul stuff to school, playdates, and the homes of other family members as well as for random covert storage purposes. Now, I want you to reach into each backpack (don't be scared!) and place a plastic-wrapped bundle of money in there. Tell the child that the money is her responsibility from now on; it must be present and accounted for at all times; they will spend much of every day looking at it but will not be allowed to use it as they please; damaged money or plastic will get the child into trouble.

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What's Now: Ballmer on Chrome, Google in Labs, and a Twitter novel

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 15, 2009, 9:00 AM

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Ballmer ... reacts ... to Chrome OS

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 • During yesterday's Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made his first public comments about Google's Chrome OS -- and to no one's surprised, he's not really moved by it, at least not to any degree he wants people to know about.

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Intel's sunny outlook brightens the sector

By Angela Gunn on July 14, 2009, 8:58 PM

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Dell may be in the doldrums, but Intel for one doesn't share that particular vendor's gloom. The chip giant on Tuesday turned in Q2 results that caused audible smiles from analysts participating in the company's quarterly earnings call.

Granted, the company did post its first quarterly net loss since 1986 for the quarter that concluded on June 27 -- a GAAP operating loss of $12 million, a net loss of $398 million, and a loss per share of 7 cents. But that's the European Union, not the market, at work, as the company's results absorbed a $1.45 billion antitrust fine from that quarter. Excluding that, the firm earned $1.4 billion in operating revenue, $1 billion in net income, and earnings per share of 18 cents.

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A Microsoft research meetup shows off three projects

By Angela Gunn on July 14, 2009, 9:24 AM

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Microsoft held its tenth annual Research Faculty Summit on Monday, and the focus was on data en masse -- processing it quickly and helping scientists make sense of it once it's gathered. Three projects shared the spotlight in Redmond.

Two of the three, Dryad and DryadLINQ, are intimately related. Both support high-performance computing. Dryad itself is an engine for making it easier to implement distributed applications on Windows HPC Server 2008 clusters. As its information page explains, "A Dryad programmer can use thousands of machines, each of them with multiple processors or cores, without knowing anything about concurrent programming."

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Up Front: A boom for Intel, maybe, but a bust for Dell

By Angela Gunn and the Betanews Staff on July 14, 2009, 9:00 AM

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Here's this morning's piece of analysts' wisdom for you: "Teenagers never use real directories (hard copy catalogues such as yellow pages). This is because real directories contain listings for builders and florists, which are services that teenagers do not require." This from an analyst report with a big financial services name behind it, that's just out this week. Two things here: Kid, ask your girlfriend when you get one about the florist thing, and is everyone else as relieved as your reporter that one generally survives the teenage years? More on that in What's Now; first, it's party time on your BlackBerry.

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