Archives: February 2007

Google Fights Click Fraud--Perceptions, Mostly

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 28, Categories: Google, Search, advertising, click fraud

Google soon will introduce some new tools to fight click fraud, such as the ability to blacklist suspected fraudsters and prevent them from even viewing ads to click on. But...

Oscars: How Dare You Give Us Free Publicity?

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 28, Categories: YouTube

So the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences asks YouTube to take down clips of Oscar moments such as Will Ferrell's musical number. OK, they're within their rights, but...

Market Swoon: Kiss Those IPOs Goodbye?

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 27, Categories: IPOs

So the market just dropped a head-spinning 416 points today. Gulp. I wonder how those antsy tech IPO candidates are feeling just now. Pass the Rolaids....

Billboards: Would-be Wi-Fi Competitors?

Posted by: Olga Kharif on February 27, Categories: wireless

Could CBS deploy the nation's largest Wi-Fi networks through its billboards? The idea is certainly being tossed around. Whether it makes sense or not is another story, though.

Web 2.0 Worm Is Making Rounds

Posted by: Olga Kharif on February 27, Categories: security

My colleague Catherine Holahan just wrote to tell me about a virus that’s making the rounds on the Web. Check out her guest blog below: You’re probably well aware of...

Of course, backdating is bad. But is it always crooked?

Posted by: Peter Burrows on February 23, Categories: Options Backdating

OK, Rob, thanks for the invite to dig farther into this backdating issue (see the next post). The question underlying my story this week isn't whether backdating is bad. Of...

Options Prosecutions May Be Weak, But Backdating Was Still Wrong

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 22, Categories: Options Backdating

My colleague Peter Burrows has a story in this week's issue making the case that stock-options backdating cases may prove weaker than they look. He may well be right. But...

Yahoo! Sees the (Fluorescent) Light

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 22, Categories: Yahoo, energy

I must admit that like many people, I'm not a fan of fluorescent lights, much as I know how much energy they save, because they always seemed to give...

Google Apps Go Corporate

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 22, Categories: Google, Microsoft, Web, software, software as service, web services

A few weeks ago, I wrote that the launch of a for-pay version of Google Apps for Your Domain was nigh. Now, it's here. And Premier Edition, a package of...

Coming Up: SunRocket Wireless?

Posted by: Olga Kharif on February 21, Categories: wireless

I've written about Vonage's plans to resell wireless services. Now, I am hearing speculations that Vonage's much-smaller rival, SunRocket, may follow suit with a wireless offering of its own.

Wii Wins Again

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on February 21, Categories: gaming

Nintendo is starting to look a lot like the little engine that could. A couple of years ago, most people were expecting the company to get out of the console...

Give Me That Old Time Technology

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on February 21, Categories: Curmudgeonly

I have recently renewed a long-time interest in old scientific instruments and, along the way, I think I have learned something interesting about today's technology, compared to the way things...

Can Intel Save Health Care?

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on February 20, Categories: Gadgets

The medical industry doesn't get much credit for being uber-efficient--and with good reason, as most hospitals and clinics have been slow to adopt readily-available technology for basic care. Change could...

Marketocracy + Foliofn: Power of the People's Portfolios

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 19, Categories: Power of Us, Web 2.0

It's one thing to trust your restaurant reviews and technology news to the Web 2.0 masses at the likes of Yelp and Digg. Are you willing to trust your investments...

Podcast O' the Week: Grammarian Drones On, and On, and On....

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 14, Categories: podcasting

I heard about a novel method of reader feedback last Saturday on NPR's quiz show, Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!, on which San Francisco Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein was...

Google Loses, or Did the Belgian Newspapers?

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 13, Categories: Google, Search, copyright

Google has lost a case brought by Belgian newspapers, potentially forcing it to exclude the newspapers' material from Google News, at least in Belgium. John Battelle and Danny Sullivan have...

Windows on a Mac: More Expensive Than You Thought

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on February 13, Categories: Microsoft

Microsoft has thrown a nasty curve ball to folks who want to run Windows Vista on their Macs using Parallels Desktop virtual machine software, at least if they care about...

Mobile TV: A Service for the Masses?

Posted by: Olga Kharif on February 13, Categories: wireless

MediaFlo just signed up AT&T as a customer. This, latest win shows that mobile TV might have much broader appeal than initially thought.

Movie Downloads Suck--But Don't Blame Technology

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on February 09, Categories: TV

I just want to amplify my colleague Rob Hof's post on the suckiness of movie downloads. Charlie White at Gizmodo gives 10 good reasons, but it's worth noting that with...

Search Upstart Powerset Teams with PARC Vs. Google

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 09, Categories: Amazon.com, Google, Innovation, Search

Powerset, the natural-language search startup I wrote about in my story on Amazon.com's digital-utility initiatives, has signed a deal with the (former Xerox) PARC in an attempt to one-up Google...

Movie Downloads: Who Cares?

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 08, Categories: Amazon.com, TV, Tivo, digital media

OK, so I cheered when Amazon.com and Tivo hooked up to offer movie downloads you can actually watch on your TV. But Charlie White at Gizmodo, in a post listing...

Tivo + Amazon: Finally!

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 07, Categories: Amazon.com, Tivo, digital media, video

Just a day after Wal-Mart announced it's doing movie downloads, Amazon.com one-upped the retail giant with a service that has seemed to me a dead-obvious thing to do: It's teaming...

Virtual Consulting on the Rise

Posted by: Olga Kharif on February 06, Categories: Web 2.0

We all hire coaches, career counselors and speech instructors to get ahead in real life. Now, it appears, people are hiring consultants to help their virtual personalities to get ahead in virtual worlds like Warcraft and Second Life.

Jobs on Dumping DRM: OK, Steve, But Now What?

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 06, Categories: Apple Computer, Digital Music, file-sharing

So Steve Jobs calls for the end of Digital Rights Management on music. And he makes all the sense in the world. But in all the chatter on TechMeme about...

Girl Power in Silicon Valley

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 05, Categories: Entrepreneurship, Silicon Valley, companies, startups

I had the opportunity in late January to see the future of entrepreneurship. And the great thing is, it wasn't two guys in a garage. It was a bunch of...

Did Facebook Blow It?

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 05, Categories: Facebook, Yahoo, advertising, social networks

That's the question GigaOM's Robert Young is asking. And from a couple of the answers in the post's comment section, the answer doesn't sound good for the social-networking service's chances...

FAST Offers Publishers a Google AdSense Alternative

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 05, Categories: Google, Search, advertising

Google has offered struggling newspapers and other publishers a Faustian bargain. Through the search giant's AdSense programs, ads get placed on their sites, bringing in revenue that they wouldn't have...

Digg's Dicey Decision

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 02, Categories: Digg, Power of Us, Web 2.0

Digg President Kevin Rose explains his controversial decision to remove from the use-powered news site the list of the top "diggers" to reduce spam and discourage people who try...

The Elephant in the Room

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on February 02, Categories: Entrepreneurship

One hot tech industry topic was strikingly missing from the just-ended DEMO 2007 conference--energy conservation. Among the 67 new products showcased, there was not a single one that would either...

Google Apps: More Than Meets the Eye?

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 02, Categories: Google, Microsoft, software, software as service

It looks like Google Apps for Your Domain soon will come outta beta with a paid version for enterprises. The one thing I wanted to explore in the story I...

Amazon.com's Holiday Surprise

Posted by: Rob Hof on February 01, Categories: Amazon.com, e-commerce

No, I don't mean Amazon's fourth-quarter net profit, which fell 50% (largely on its having to pay taxes compared with a tax benefit from a year ago)--though it did top...