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Silverlight 3 goes live on Microsoft's servers
Microsoft's answer to Adobe's Flash is (unofficially) here, with prospects of higher-speed, higher-resolution video and for the first time, 3D.
Three Android phones on the way from T-Mobile in 2009
T-Mobile's myTouch 3G, launched Wednesday, will be followed by two more Android phones later this year, but neither of them will be HTC's Hero.
Best Buy-brand TVs to get TiVo
A new alliance will place the retailer's own brand alongide the manufacturers, and could also lead to future partnerships on services.
LTE still lacks a voice
The 4G Wireless standard that Verizon hopes to show off before this year is out is still at a loss for (spoken) words.
Data sharing among online advertisers: Is sanity in sight?
Lockdown with Angela Gunn In the middle of a 15-page plea not to get regulated, a spark of smart thinking.
T-Mobile's strategy to combat Apple's iPhone with Android
With a trio of Android phones now in the pipeline for 2009, T-Mobile hopes to break the iPhone's emerging stranglehold.
EC's Reding: Government should act as broker for media downloads
If Internet media services don't step up and build an attractive way for users to start paying for downloads, a commissioner says, government may do the job instead.
Sony TVs get Netflix, still no PS3
Though it's coming in behind LG, Samsung, and Microsoft, Sony will begin to offer Netflix streaming, too.
Google Chrome OS: Too little, too early
Carmi Levy: Wide Angle Zoom Don't start the revolution just yet, says Carmi, who isn't so certain Chrome OS will be the "Windows Killer."
GAO pen test brings the hammer down on federal rent-a-cops
But are the computers to blame for the contract-guard fiasco at FPS?
What's Next: Chrome OS will have at least some friends in high places
Also: South Korea takes another round of DDoS abuse, and Neelie Kroes and Steve Ballmer may shake hands before she exits stage left.
Report: Evidence of further creativity with Windows 7 upgrade prices
A ZDNet blogger did some serious digging for clues as to a reported price break on multiple Windows 7 Home Premium licenses, and may have found it.
Sinofsky promotion to Windows president much deserved, but Ballmer should have done it sooner
By Joe Wilcox on July 8, 2009, 5:50 PM
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The only problem with Microsoft naming Steven Sinofsky president of the Windows division is the timing. He deserved this promotion long ago, and Microsoft has long needed someone in charge of the division.
Microsoft was wrong to wait until Sinofsky's team nearly finished Windows 7 to give out this badly needed promotion. The Client division is hemorrhaging profits, as Vista enthusiasm collapses and PC sales plummet.
The Google Revolution begins; Will you join the fight?
By Joe Wilcox on July 8, 2009, 3:10 PM
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July now has a third major independence day. Canada on the first. The United States on the fourth. Google on the seventh.
July 7 is the day Google declared independence from Microsoft dependence. It is the day one Google blog post fired the first shot heard at Lexington and Concord. The post might as well be the first paragraph of the US Declaration of Independence:
Continue reading The Google Revolution begins; Will you join the fight?...
Leave Steve's liver alone
By Carmi Levy on June 22, 2009, 2:08 PM
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It's a question friends and family have been asking me ever since The Wall Street Journal reported last Saturday that Apple Chairman and CEO Steve Jobs had undergone a liver transplant two months ago: Should our health records be made public?
I admit I'm of two minds on the issue. On the one hand, Apple shareholders have the right to know how the company they essentially own plans to manage itself both today and in the future. They deserve enough information to make informed decisions about whether they wish to retain their ownership stake and how they wish to remain involved, as shareholders, in the evolution of the company. It's a fundamental pillar of our economic system that publicly traded companies provide enough transparency to keep shareholders informed -- not to mention senior leaders honest.
Steve Jobs recovers from liver transplant
By Tim Conneally on June 20, 2009, 12:53 AM
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Now that the next iPhone launch is at least a solid year away, the truth behind CEO Steve Jobs' six-month medical leave has finally been released to the Wall Street Journal .
In January, Jobs said he had been diagnosed with a hormone imbalance, and the public speculated it was actually intestinal cancer . Tonight, it was revealed that the "hormone imbalance" was an issue with his liver. According to the WSJ report, Jobs underwent a liver transplant two months ago in Tennessee, and has been in recovery since that time. A statement from Apple to the paper said the CEO is still looking forward to a return to work at the end of the month.
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What will MySpace become after a 30% headcount reduction?
By Scott M. Fulton, III on June 16, 2009, 4:00 PM
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The question financial analysts are asking this afternoon in the wake of News Corp.'s layoff of 30% of MySpace employees is not, "Will this help?" Or even, "Does this make things better." It appears to be, "Will this be enough?"
In a frank statement this afternoon demonstrating he hasn't lost his touch since leaving AOL, News Corp.'s Chief Digital Officer Jonathan Miller pronounced the deed done, saying, "MySpace grew too big considering the realities of today's marketplace. I believe this restructuring will help MySpace operate much more effectively both structurally and financially moving forward. I am confident in MySpace's next phase under the leadership of [CEO] Owen [Van Natta] and his team."
Continue reading What will MySpace become after a 30% headcount reduction?...
Google settles AdWords overcharge spat
By Angela Gunn on June 10, 2009, 7:31 PM
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A class-action lawsuit served on Google by AdWords advertisers who were charged more than their Daily Budget plan should have allowed, will be awarded up to $20,000 under the terms of a settlement reached this week. Meanwhile, the lawyers who brought the suit were awarded up to $5 million, plus expenses, for their trouble.
The suit covered AdWords advertisers who signed on between June 1, 2005 and February 28, 2009, and who were charged more than their Daily Budget on any day during that period, sometimes by as much as 120%. Advertising resellers are not included in the class. Google files four motions for partial summary judgment in the matter, then chose the settlement route -- admitting no liability or guilt, but apparently deciding that a $20,000,000 settlement was less of a nuisance than continued litigation. (The $20 million was put into an escrow account at the end of March.) Much of the payout will be offered in the form of ad credits for marketers.
'Pre-Father' Jon Rubenstein takes over Palm CEO spot
By Angela Gunn on June 10, 2009, 6:31 PM
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Palm on Wednesday announced that Jon Rubenstein, the former Apple exec who was lured out of a hammock on a Puerto Vallarta beach to helm the development and launch of the Pre, will step into the CEO role on Friday. Ed Colligan, who led the company for 16 years, will take some time off before joining Elevation Partners, the venture-cap firm instrumental in bringing Rubenstein in.
Mr. Rubenstein got his start at HP, has long been credited with helping to invent the iPod and served as the first head of the company's iPod division. Now known as Apple's "pod-father," he has been aboard Palm since July, but only official as executive chairman since October. Before that, teams of Elevation and Palm execs were making pilgrimages to Mexico to coax him off that beach, as he famously told the crowd at the CES Pre unveiling back in January.
Continue reading 'Pre-Father' Jon Rubenstein takes over Palm CEO spot...
Missing Steve Jobs: Absence makes the heart grow sadder
By Carmi Levy on June 8, 2009, 5:25 PM
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I've got a confession to make: I miss Steve Jobs.
Although I don't believe in worshipping at his altar alongside his legions of ardent fans, I can't deny that a Jobs keynote -- or anything he says, thinks or touches -- is more memorable simply because it came from him. While it's fair to say the vast majority of today's wonder-devices and services exist because of visionaries who had the guts to see beyond the here and now, it's also true that these very individuals have traditionally been quiet geniuses, content to drive their companies from behind a wall of corporate secrecy.
Continue reading Missing Steve Jobs: Absence makes the heart grow sadder...
How soon will AOL become Google's prime competitor?
By Scott M. Fulton, III on May 28, 2009, 11:53 AM
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It's time to stop with all the "I told you so's" and the gloating and the self-congratulation, on the part of everyone (myself included) who never saw synergies between the former America Online and Time Warner, who are just as capable of reading the big, fluorescent handwriting on the wall as anyone else. We knew it wouldn't work . End of part one.
The task before Tim Armstrong -- minted as CEO of AOL in March -- and his team is to define the company. It has some very old parts and some very big assets, but other than that, it's a startup. If you "Google" Tim Armstrong (a number of ironies latent in that phrase), you discover almost instantly the type of independent CEO he will be. He helped build Google into the advertising sales giant it is today (its merger with DoubleClick notwithstanding), and he takes the knowledge of that blueprint with him to AOL. He is an ad man, and AOL will be an advertising platform.
Continue reading How soon will AOL become Google's prime competitor?...
Psystar promises bankruptcy court it will rethink its business plan
By Scott M. Fulton, III on May 27, 2009, 2:49 PM
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It isn't Psystar's legal tangle with Apple Inc. that led to its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in a Florida federal court last Thursday. Rather, seven of the independent PC maker's top 10 creditors were credit card processing services, making up about 44% of its outstanding debt to those top 10 creditors. The IRS accounted for less than 5% of that debt. This according to court documents obtained by Betanews from the US Bankruptcy Court for Southern Florida.
Although Psystar also didn't blame Apple in its petition for an emergency relief hearing the following day, it did mention the company as the developer of the operating system on which its Open-brand PCs are based. Instead, the story Psystar told is one that could apply to a thousand independent PC makers across the country, except for one important element: It's almost impossible for an OEM of Psystar's size to compete in the PC market on price alone, while still maintaining profitability.
Continue reading Psystar promises bankruptcy court it will rethink its business plan...
HP looks to its Services division to carry the load
By Angela Gunn on May 19, 2009, 5:47 PM
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Hewlett-Packard's recent acquisition of EDS is going great. Swimmingly. Normalizing ahead of schedule, even. That's nice, because Services is getting to be a big deal for an HP that otherwise experienced declines virtually across the board over the second quarter recently ended. Indeed, the recession is still with us, and HP's profits are down 17%, or $400 million, year over year.
Services revenue grew 99%, but those numbers are skewed by the acquisition. Otherwise, only the Technology Solutions Group saw year-over-year growth, with other departments down between 6% (HP Financial Services) to 28% (Enterprise Storage and Servers). Analog printing's ongoing movement to digital led the Imaging and Printing Group to 33% of HP's Q2 profits. In the Personal Systems Group, total units sold remained flat, with sales of desktops off by nearly 25%. Sales overall would have been up 3% were it not for those pesky currency fluctuations; as it is, they're down 3%.
Continue reading HP looks to its Services division to carry the load...
Panasonic's losses quadruple Sony's: down $4.68 billion
By Tim Conneally on May 15, 2009, 3:13 PM
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This week, major Japanese consumer electronics companies posted their fiscal 2009 revenues, and provided an outlook into the coming year. To say earnings have been disheartening would be a multi-million dollar understatement.
Because of a harsh currency exchange and declining sales, Sony registered a loss of around one billion dollars , NEC's net loss was upwards of $3 billion, Hitachi lost a staggering $8.03 billion, and Sanyo -- which is in the process of merging with Panasonic -- reported a net loss of $970 million.
Continue reading Panasonic's losses quadruple Sony's: down $4.68 billion...
April showers bring May comScore numbers
By Angela Gunn on May 14, 2009, 6:15 PM
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Here's food for thought: Twitter isn't just more popular than professional wrestling, though that's something of a shock. It's more popular than baseball. Seems un-American, doesn't it.
It's more popular than MLB.com, anyway; the April comScore numbers are out, and the microblogging service is the 56th most popular site around (as far as unique visitors go), compared to MLB.com's 87th-place ranking. But all three sites are, along with the 236th-ranked stompin' matches World Wrestling Entertainment site, among the top-gaining properties as measured by the Reston, Va.-based ratings service.
Continue reading April showers bring May comScore numbers...
Sony loses a billion, but it's not alone
By Tim Conneally on May 14, 2009, 4:50 PM
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Sony has marked 2008 as a billion dollar loser.
But this is slightly good news. In January, the Japanese consumer electronics giant braced the public for 2008 earnings that it expected to be more than two and a half times worse. The bad part is that despite Sony's best efforts, which include a workforce reduction of 16,000 and closure of 8 manufacturing facilities, the strong Yen is responsible for 85% of the company's losses. The company's sales and operating revenue were only down 2% otherwise.
Continue reading Sony loses a billion, but it's not alone...
Intel CEO: The exclusivity and loyalty of OEMs are up for bids
By Scott M. Fulton, III on May 13, 2009, 4:26 PM
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This morning's ruling by the European Commission essentially finding Intel guilty of illegally tying rebates to exclusivity agreements, and other practices, is said to be a 500+ page document that as of now remains under seal. But the EC's characterization of its ruling today paints a picture of a dominant market manipulator that made exclusivity deals with at least five major global PC producers and Germany's largest PC retailer, making them offers they couldn't refuse that kept AMD from competing on an equal playing field.
"Not all rebates are a competition problem -- often they will lead to lower prices for consumers in the long term as well as the short," stated EC Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes in a press conference this morning in Brussels. "But the Intel rebates in this case were a problem because of the conditions that Intel attached to its rebates. Moreover, the Commission has examined closely whether an efficient competitor could have matched these rebates. These conditions, to buy less of AMD's products or to not buy them at all, prevented AMD from competing with Intel on the merits of its products. This removed the possibility of genuine choice for consumers and undermined innovation."
Continue reading Intel CEO: The exclusivity and loyalty of OEMs are up for bids...
Opting to go one-up in virtualization, Oracle ingests Virtual Iron
By Angela Gunn on May 13, 2009, 2:37 PM
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The company already has a decent hypervisor in Oracle VM, and more options on the way as the Sun buy comes to pass, but Oracle is apparently looking to upgrade its toolset. The company announced on Wednesday that it's acquiring Virtual Iron (nee Katana Technology), which offers a hypervisor with an interesting and speedy set of system tools. It's expected that those tools will be combined with the current Oracle offering.
Virtual Iron has in recent years been overtaken by big-iron (Citrix, VMWare, Microsoft) interest in the category, but the company brought some interesting policy-based and modular thinking to the table. Past and current customers include Priceline.com, Sandia National Labs, Siemens, Toyota, Hitachi and the office of the Maine Attorney General.
Continue reading Opting to go one-up in virtualization, Oracle ingests Virtual Iron...
Retailers face new hurdles in their exodus to the Internet
By Tim Conneally on May 13, 2009, 12:48 PM
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This Friday, May 15, the United States Census Bureau will release its revised quarterly e-commerce market estimate , in which the government looks at overall retail performance and compares it with the online retail environment. Since the turn of the millennium, e-commerce has been expected to eventually supplant on-site shopping, and has represented an increasing portion of all retail sales. That is, it did until 2008.
Because of the recession, the Census Bureau last year predicted that growth would all but cease in e-commerce. The National Retail Federation found that these predictions were mostly true, and marked a 2% decline in Internet spending in 2008, the first such decline since becoming recognized as a significant retail channel.
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EU fines Intel $1.4B, says it paid OEMs, retailer to exclude AMD products
By Scott M. Fulton, III on May 13, 2009, 11:21 AM
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For years, the evidence against Intel with regard to its business conduct in Europe has been treated as allegation, especially by anyone in the press with any serious intent of showing fairness. As of today, at least in Europe, it's no longer an allegation: Intel cheated, says the European Commission this morning, in a decision that can best be described as the worst-case scenario for Intel coming to fruition.
This morning, the EC found that for a 62-month period beginning in October 2002, Intel paid German retailer MediaMarkt, which operates stores primarily in Germany and Russia (not an EU member), to sell Intel-based computers exclusively in its retail outlets. This based on evidence turned up during a February 2008 raid of Intel's German offices.
Continue reading EU fines Intel $1.4B, says it paid OEMs, retailer to exclude AMD products...
What makes Google tick? A management consultant takes an adoring look
By Angela Gunn on May 11, 2009, 4:17 PM
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Most business books are very much of a particular moment, and when that moment passes -- management changes, stock prices plummet, or the buzz that made the business book-worthy slips away -- the book seems dated. This, then is the moment to grab Bernard Girard's The Google Way . which documents the workings of the search giant.
Girard, a management consultant, has been tracking Google since 2000, and his book analyzes the structure and philosophy of the company even as it's grappled with the current recession. (This means we're more current than the French, who got an earlier version of this text in 2006 as Une Révolution du Management: le Modèle Google .) Girard sees the Sergey-Brin-Schmidt triumvirate as no less innovative than a Henry Ford or a Taiichi Ohno (the man who made Toyota a global powerhouse) or Ikea's Ingvar Kamprad. Google's strength, he posits, doesn't merely come from superior algorithms but from rethinking how a company functions.
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Even more fusion after the latest AMD reorganization
By Scott M. Fulton, III on May 7, 2009, 11:37 AM
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In the business press and in business marketing, the term "merger" is often used quite loosely, sometimes to mean the incorporation of another company as a division of the acquirer. When AMD acquired ATI in July 2006 , the merger was touted as a pairing of equals, and the forging of a permanent fraternity between two giants in their respective fields. But almost immediately afterward, talk of ways to build processors that used AMD cores and ATI pipelines together led to discussion about truly fusing the two divisions' business units; and the first sign of the fallout from that discussion was former ATI CEO Dave Orton's departure from the AMD executive ranks in July 2007.
Almost precisely one year ago, the actual fusion of the two divisions began, with the creation of a Central Engineering group that would conduct research and development for all the company's processors. Freescale Semiconductor veteran Chekib Akrout was brought in to lead that department, but in a partnership arrangement with AMD veteran Jeff VerHeul. Yesterday afternoon, AMD announced the remainder of its fusion is complete: As AMD spokesperson Drew Prairie explained to Betanews this morning, there is now one marketing department and one product management department as well, while some of the functionality of Akrout's department is being shifted.
Continue reading Even more fusion after the latest AMD reorganization...
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