Archives: March 2005

How the Music Industry Makes its Money

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 30, Categories:

Think back to the heyday of Napster, when a befuddled music industry was confronted for the first time with massive file sharing. It was a crisis. Since then, the tech...

Amazon.com: A Repository of Perfect Information?

Posted by: Olga Kharif on March 29, Categories:

I recently asked Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels about new features he is working on for his site. He told me he is striving to provide consumers with “perfect information”: He...

Tilting at Windmills

Posted by: Steve Hamm on March 25, Categories:

By S. Hamm Usually, it's hard to take seriously a guy who looks like an alumni of the Mickey Mouse Club, but, for Michael Robertson, you've got to make an...

Video Games to Sell... Books?

Posted by: Olga Kharif on March 24, Categories:

As video and PC gaming's popularity skyrocketed in the past few years, our favorite TV shows ("The Simpsons"), movies ("Catwoman") and comic books ("Batman") were turned into games. Now, we...

PARC to Make TV Watching More Social

Posted by: Olga Kharif on March 22, Categories:

Have you ever wished your buddies were right there, watching the game with you on days other than Super Bowl? The cheering, cursing and yacking that occur in front of...

Tech's Next-Generation Entrepreneurs?

Posted by: Rob Hof on March 22, Categories: Entrepreneurship

Young nerds flock to PC Forum's Net access kiosks....

Why Jerry Yang Likes Flickr

Posted by: Rob Hof on March 21, Categories: Social Media

Yahoo! cofounder and Chief Yahoo Jerry Yang filled me in a bit this morning on why his company just bought the photo sharing site Flickr. ......

Yahoo! snaps up Flickr

Posted by: Rob Hof on March 20, Categories: Social Media

After weeks of rumors, it's now official: Yahoo! has bought Flickr, the red-hot photo-sharing site. Yahoo! cofounder Jerry Yang, appearing at PC Forum in Scottsdale today, took pains to assure...

Salesforce.com: The vision gets grander

Posted by: Steve Hamm on March 18, Categories:

Marc Benioff, the genial CEO of anti-software maker Salesforce.com, has a challenge that lots of other CEOs would envy. Over the past six years, as the San Francisco-based company grew...

Poetic justice for Cisco in San Jose City Hall deal

Posted by: Peter Burrows on March 16, Categories:

OK, there's no comparing this to the Bernie Ebbers' conviction, or even to Congress' pursuit of baseball's bigshots in the steriod scandal. It may pale even next to that other...

The Digitization of Making Stuff

Posted by: Rob Hof on March 16, Categories: Innovation

Now that we've digitized communications and computing, says Neil Gershenfeld, who heads MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, we're about to digitize the process of making physical things. "We're...

Get Ready for Spag

Posted by: Rob Hof on March 16, Categories: Social Media

Heard at the Emerging Technology conference, the possible birth of a new word: Spag. That would be what folks at a meeting on tagging think will happen before long: Spammers...

Creating Software Without Software

Posted by: Rob Hof on March 15, Categories: open source software

Will we all be programmers before long? That's the upshot of a presentation today at the Emerging Technology conference by Adam Gross, director of product marketing at Salesforce.com. He contends...

Kids: A Goldmine for Wireless Companies?

Posted by: Olga Kharif on March 15, Categories:

We've all heard parents sigh that teens are a pain. Until recently, wireless companies seemed to have agreed with that notion wholeheartedly -- by virtually ignoring this market. They had...

But Don't Forget Google and Yahoo!

Posted by: Rob Hof on March 15, Categories: Search

Lest that last post make it sound like Amazon's A9.com is the only one advancing the state of search, Google and Yahoo! clearly are moving ahead fast as well. ......

Searching for Jeff Bezos

Posted by: Rob Hof on March 15, Categories: Search

For years, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos has attended O'Reilly & Associates' Emerging Technology conference for fun, but today he played demo god for the overflow audience in San Diego....

How the cookies crumble

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 14, Categories:

Jupiter Research comes out with a report saying that nearly four of 10 Websurfers erase cookies from their browsers on a regular basis. This is grim news for advertisers, who...

Bad News, Bloggers

Posted by: Rob Hof on March 11, Categories: blogs

A federal judge has just ruled that the three Web sites that published leaked information about upcoming Apple Computer products must divulge their sources. It's a decision that means bloggers...

I have seen the future

Posted by: Steve Hamm on March 10, Categories:

It's located in a godforsaken armpit of northern New Jersey, and it looks so nondescript that you'd never expect anything important to be happening there—least of all the future....

Microsoft Stays in its Groove

Posted by: Rob Hof on March 10, Categories: Social Software

Microsoft's purchase today of Groove Networks isn't really surprising, given its previous investments in the collaboration software company. And you certainly can't accuse the Redmond giant of being inconsistent. Buying...

New Generation of Search Sites to Threaten Google

Posted by: Olga Kharif on March 08, Categories:

New search sites have been popping up left and right lately, seemingly with more frequency than during the Internet boom. This time around, though, these next-generation search sites are no...

eBay's Stealthy New Classified Ads Site

Posted by: Rob Hof on March 08, Categories: e-commerce

Following scattered rumors, AuctionBytes.com offers a bit of detail on Kijiji.com, which is a new network of classified ads that eBay quietly launched in six countries. The stated goal: to...

Google Desktop Search: Yawn?

Posted by: Rob Hof on March 07, Categories: Search

I've found Google's just-outta-beta desktop search tool pretty useful, if not perfect. But Dave Winer makes some pithy arguments against hailing it as a big deal, let alone a blow...

More on bloggers and libel

Posted by: Stephen Baker on March 07, Categories:

Lots of response to Jessi Hempel's commentary on bloggers and journalism. Dan Gillmor linked to the story and clarified that bloggers can in fact be sued for libel. Hempel responds:...

Does Technology Make the Journalist?

Posted by: Rob Hof on March 04, Categories: blogs

Or unmake the journalist? That's the upshot of a key preliminary ruling in Apple Computer's lawsuit against several sites that revealed details about the company's new products. Apple contends that...

What is it about V?

Posted by: Steve Hamm on March 04, Categories:

VMware is the software industry's phenomenal success story of the past year. (Salesforce.com hit its stride the year before) But now along comes a new rival, Virtual Iron, that hopes...

Retailers: Don't look a gift horse in the mouth

Posted by: Rob Hof on March 01, Categories: e-commerce

It never fails. As soon as I find a restaurant I love, it goes under. I felt the same way yesterday, when Circuit City announced it's ending a partnership with...

Getting Up Close And Personal With Your Favorite Artist

Posted by: Olga Kharif on March 01, Categories:

In the past, we thought of, say Madonna, Eminem and Duran Duran as our untouchable idols (Ok, so maybe you don't like M&M, but stay with me for a minute)....