Miscellaneous
15 September 2011
Google's Rivals Unite on Ads: Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL to Sell Space on Each Other's Sites in Counterattack Wall Street Journal
In their boldest attempt to battle the growing dominance of Google Inc. and save their embattled advertising businesses, Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and AOL Inc. plan to band together to sell ads on each other's sites, according to advertising executives pitched on the initiative.
14 September 2011
How Google Translate works The Independent
The web giant's translation service might serve up the odd batch of nonsense, but it's still one of the smartest communication tools of all time
13 September 2011
Rovio Claims to Be Fastest-Growing Global Consumer Brand Ever AllThingsD
Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds, is saying it has grown faster than YouTube, MySpace, Skype and Amazon in the first two years of operations and is claiming to be the fastest-growing consumer brand in the world.
Tasmania may win via green Google criteria The Australian
Google will develop new data centres in locations with a high percentage of renewable energy use, which makes Tasmania the only viable option in Australia should that be the main criteria.
12 September 2011
So Many Gadgets, So Many Aches New York Times
Look around, they're everywhere: hunched shoulders, angled necks and wrists, hands twisted like claws. As people harness their bodies to use more electronic devices in more places, they may unknowingly be putting themselves at a greater risk of injury.
11 September 2011
More trouble for Yahoo! The internet company boots out its boss. But it will struggle to reboot its business The Economist
When Carol Bartz took the wheel at Yahoo! in January 2009 one of her first acts was to tell employees that she would "drop-kick to fucking Mars" anyone who was caught leaking company secrets. Now it is Ms Bartz who has been drop-kicked out of the company. On September 6th news leaked via AllThingsD, a technology-news website, that she had been ousted in a surprise coup by Yahoo!'s board. Official confirmation swiftly followed, with the news that Tim Morse, the firm's chief financial officer, would take over as interim chief executive, supported by a leadership committee of senior managers. In ditching one of Silicon Valley's most colourful characters, whose potty-mouthed epithets have become something of a personal trademark, Yahoo! has signalled the depth of its problems. Fixing them will not be easy.
10 September 2011
AOL and Yahoo reported to be in merger talks The Guardian
AOL and Yahoo, fallen giants of the first age of the internet, are reportedly discussing a merger. The news comes after Yahoo axed chief executive Carol Bartz earlier this week.
09 September 2011
Google discloses carbon footprint for the first time The Guardian
Google's carbon footprint is on a par with the United Nations, the internet giant revealed on Thursday as it published its energy usage for the first time.
07 September 2011
Yahoo could be sold after Carol Bartz is shown the door The Guardian
Yahoo may be up for sale after firing Carol Bartz, its chief executive for just 18 months. Once one of the internet's most valuable properties - and the target of a spurned $44.6bn takeover bid from Microsoft in January 2008 - the company said in a statement it is carrying out a "comprehensive strategic review" to "position the company for future growth". But an insider speaking to the Wall Street Journal said the company is "open to selling itself to the right bidder".
30 August 2011
Amazon Could Sell Five Million Tablets in Three Months AllThingsD
The tablet that Amazon has yet to mention but which everyone expects to arrive this fall could be a big seller, with Jeff Bezos and Co. moving three to five million units in Q4.
For Google CEO Larry Page, a Difficult Premiere Role Wall Street Journal
When Google Inc. co-founder Larry Page announced that he would take over as chief executive earlier this year, he promised that he would shake up the Internet search giant to speed up decision making. Instead, much of the shaking up has happened to the new CEO.
29 August 2011
Tablet computers - Difference Engine: Reality dawns The Economist
Last week's bombshell announcement by Hewlett-Packard that it was hiving off its personal-computer business -- and, in particular, would cease making tablet computers and mobile phones forthwith -- was greeted with shock and horror, plus a 20% plunge in share price. Canny investors promptly snapped up the depressed stock, realising it was the smartest move HP has made in years. More than anything else, the announcement showed that the firm had finally seen the light about the tablet market -- namely, that there is no such thing.
The political party that wants to ban PowerPoint The Guardian
Switzerland could become the first country to outlaw PowerPoint presentations if a new party runs in the October parliamentary elections. Matthias Poehm, founder of the Anti-PowerPoint Party, claims that €350bn could be saved globally each year by ditching the scourge of public speaking. Poehm believes that the software takes people away from their work and teaches them little. "There is a solution," he says. "A flipchart."
28 August 2011
Opinion: Why iPads in cockpits proves the future of PCs is up in the air The Observer
With admirable aplomb, if not grammar, Michael Dell, the chief executive and founder of Dell Inc, tweeted last week: "Like Mark Twain, the reports of PC's death have been greatly exaggerated." His point (once you got past the dangling participle) being that he thinks the PC business is still alive and kicking.
Aping IBM: HP needs to transform itself if it is to avoid becoming obsolete The Economist
When the board of HP, the world's largest computer-maker, unveiled plans to restructure, it expected the company's shares to suffer; but not to crash by 20%. HP's bosses thought investors would love their plan to spin off the firm's low-margin personal-computer (PC) business, but be wary of their plan to buy Autonomy, a British software-maker, for a handsome $10.3 billion. In fact, they hated both ideas. On August 19th, the day after the announcement, they wiped $12 billion off HP's market value.
26 August 2011
BT taskforce tackles phone cable theft BBC News
Copper theft is a growing problem for the communication network in Northern Ireland, British Telelcom has said.
In France, Publisher and Google Reach Deal New York Times
A second French publisher has reached a deal on digital books with Google to settle a copyright lawsuit in exchange for control over how its out-of-print, copyright-protected works are scanned and sold.
24 August 2011
Sell Big or Die Fast New York Times
Seven weeks after it was put on sale, Hewlett-Packard killed its TouchPad tablet, the company's competitor to Apple's iPad.
When Should You Buy Consumer Tech Products? MIT Technology Review
Researchers and companies are developing algorithms to predict the best time to buy new consumer tech products.
23 August 2011
China Overtakes U.S. as Largest Market for PCs Bloomberg
China probably overtook the U.S. as the largest personal-computer market last quarter, after three decades of American dominance in an industry pioneered by Apple and IBM.
19 August 2011
Tim Berners-Lee voted most inspirational person in their 50s The Guardian
The young, it seems, need do little more than flick a Bieberesque fringe or pout vampirically to attract the undying devotion of their peers.
08 August 2011
Yahoo: One Site Fits All, Except for Advertisers New York Times
Yahoo is the granddaddy of all-things-to-all-people Web sites. And the concept still shows surprising life: Yahoo has users, in spades. But it has failed dismally in translating popularity into strong revenue growth.
07 August 2011
Internet companies: Attack of the clones - American web firms are battling foreign hordes that look remarkably similar The Economist
On August 1st Airbnb, an online marketplace that helps people rent rooms, admitted that it had mishandled a complaint from someone whose apartment was ransacked by one of its renters. Brian Chesky, the firm's boss, begged forgiveness and announced that from August 15th Airbnb would cover up to $50,000-worth of damage caused by its customers, subject to certain (as yet unannounced) conditions. Soon afterwards 9flats, a rival based in Berlin, said it, too, would offer insurance.
05 August 2011
Internet Wars: Version 2.0: The new politics behind evaluating the true worth of tech investments Wall Street Journal
Is there another technology bubble in the making? This question has exercised the media and markets since the extraordinary post-IPO performance of LinkedIn, the social network for professionals. Social-sales aggregator Groupon has recently suggested that conventional valuation methods are obsolete and this has only reinforced parallels with the anything-goes internet IPOs of the early 2000s.
04 August 2011
Twitter valued at $8bn after large investment The Guardian
Twitter, the microblogging website that lets users tweet messages of 140 characters or less, is now worth $8bn (£4.9bn). The firm's new price tag comes after a $400m investment in the loss-making venture from serial social media investor DST Global. Twitter is now nominally worth about the same as rating agency Moody's, which had revenues of $1.2bn in the first six months of 2011 and is nearly as valuable as Marks & Spencer.
