Archives: January 2009

Windows 7: Heading for Early Release?

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 30

As someone who has closely watched every major Windows development process since Windows 95 and seen them all slip further and further behind schedule, Windows 7 has been a happy...

T-Mobile to Launch More G Phones in 2009

Posted by: Olga Kharif on January 30

A T-Mobile G2 could be coming out soon. A T-Mobile USA exec recently said that more "G series" phones will be coming down the pike this year, "in the coming weeks and months."

How Broad Is Dell’s Brand?

Posted by: Aaron Ricadela on January 30

The latest reports that Dell is eyeing the smart phone market also beg the question whether any foray into consumer electronics—now or in the future—can successfully expand its portfolio. A...

Speculation Over: Obama's BlackBerry is a BlackBerry

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 30

When President Barack Obama won his argument to continue carrying a BlackBerry, there was a lot of speculation, based on not much of anything, that aides were using the term...

Amazon Blows Away Fourth Quarter Earnings Expectations

Posted by: Peter Burrows on January 29

This is getting embarrassing for every other retailer on the planet. While Circuit City was shuttering its doors and many others were holding on for dear life, Amazon was blasting...

A Rocky Start for Measurement Lab

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 29

On Wednesday, Google, the new America Foundation, and the PlanetLab Conortium announced Measurement Lab, a set of tools designed to help you figure out if someone, such as a network...

Windows 7: A Clarification on XP Upgrades

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 29

A number of commenters on my column on Windows 7 expressed dismay that Microsoft does not plan to provide an upgrade path from XP. I want to clarify just...

Sirius XM: Another Analyst Discontinues Coverage

Posted by: Olga Kharif on January 28

Sirius XM investors just got more bad news. On Jan. 28, Barclay Capital analyst James Ratcliffe announced that he is discontinuing coverage of the satellite radio service provider, "as we believe that the equity price is not being driven by fundamentals or the future of the underlying business, but rather purely by speculation as to the company's ability to refinance or restructure upcoming debt maturities."

DTV Update: Fast-track Effort Fails in House

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 28

An effort by the Democratic leadership to ram a four-month delay in the shutdown of analog television broadcasts through the House failed Wednesday in the face of Republican opposition. The...

iPhone Boosts AT&T Q4 Business, Hurts Profits

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 28

The iPhone continues to be a good news-bad news story for AT&T. In its fourth-quarter financial results released today, AT&T said it activated 1.9 million iPhones in the three months...

LIVE: Yahoo's Fourth-Quarter Earnings Beat Forecasts; Bartz Says "Not for Sale"

Posted by: Rob Hof on January 27

Yahoo managed to outpace dour expectations for its fourth quarter, beating profit expectations handily. Despite showing a net loss of $303 million thanks to the costs of layoffs and office...

Netflix: Tech's New Superstar?

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on January 27

You can't blame investors who are scrambling to grab stock these days in DVD rental service Netflix. The company's stock jumped nearly 16% to $35 in early trading Jan. 27...

DTV: A Mess That Could Have Been Avoided

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on January 27

As my colleague Steve Wildstrom wrote in an earlier post, it looks like the much-delayed transition to all-digital television will be delayed yet again. But will it really? The Senate...

Broadband Battle: Verizon's Fiber Strategy Working But Enterprise Disappoints

Posted by: Spencer Ante on January 27

A quick thought on this morning's earnings from Verizon. The most noteworthy news out of the announcement, besides the fact that Verizon's business model is mostly holding up during the...

DTV Delay: A Done Deal

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 26

The House is expected to vote Tuesday to delay the final transition to digital television in the U.S. from Feb. 17 to June 12, following the Senate's unanimous passage of...

New Mac Trojan in Pirated Photoshop

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 26

The last few days have delivered two clear computer security messages that shouldn't have been needed: Downloading pirated software is very, very dangerous as well as wrong and don't...

Freeman Dyson on "Birds and Frogs"

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 23

Recommended reading: Physicist Freeman Dyson's brilliant essay (PDF) in Notices of the American Mathematical Society classifies mathematicians and physicists as either "birds"--high-level theorists and synthesizers--or "frogs"--empiricists and problem-solvers and shows...

OS X Trojan in iWork Torrent Downloads

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 22

It's an article of faith among Mac fanboys that their favorite computer is invulnerable to the sort of nasty malware that plagues the Windows world (see this comment thread.) Alas,...

LIVE: Google's Fourth-Quarter Earnings Beat Expectations

Posted by: Rob Hof on January 22

Google's much-anticipated fourth-quarter earnings are out, and it appears to have beat expectations that were muted thanks to the struggling economy and Google's own recent cost-cutting moves. Google earned a...

Coming Shortly: Economic Acid Test for Google and Search Advertising

Posted by: Rob Hof on January 22

Now that Microsoft has an early answer to its fourth-quarter earnings--bad--tech investors turn their attention to the other behemoth that will report its earnings today: Google. Thanks to a flurry...

IMVU Investment Highlights Continued Strength in Social Networking

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on January 22

Pundits says the downturn soon will cause a massive shakeout in the overcrowded social networking industry as funds dry up and advertising dwindles. That makes it all the more interesting...

Steve Ballmer's Letter to Microsoft Employees, Regarding Job Cuts

Posted by: Peter Burrows on January 22

Here's the full text of Ballmer's letter: In response to the realities of a deteriorating economy, we’re taking important steps to realign Microsoft’s business. I want to tell you about...

Microsoft Announces Quarter And Job Cuts: It Could Have Been Worse

Posted by: Peter Burrows on January 22

In its first broad-based job cut, Microsoft will trim its 95,000 person workforce by 5,000 jobs over the next 18 months, starting with 1,400 today. The company also announced quarterly...

Obama, BlackBerrys, and Secure Communications

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 22

News coverage of the fate of President Barack Obama's BlackBerry has generated a lot more heat than light. What seemed the most definitive word, an Atlantic blog post by Marc...

Intel Cuts Capacity

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on January 21

You know it's bad in the chip industry when giant Intel cries uncle. The Santa Clara (Calif.)chipmaker announced Jan. 21 that it would be shuttering five older manufacturing plants to...

IBM, the (non) Computer Company

Posted by: Steve Hamm on January 21

It struck me hard when I was listening to IBM's quarterly earnings conference call yesterday: Computer hardware has become a tiny piece of this giant company. Big Blue reported $5.4...

The DTV Delay: A Bad Idea

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 21

It looks like the digital television conversion, in the works for 12 years, is going to be delayed for five months or so, from the scheduled Feb. 17 to June...

A Death Knell for Plasma TV?

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on January 21

Is it time to unplug the plasma TV? European regulators are beginning to think so--at least for those giant energy-guzzling beasts that require several fans to keep cool. The European...

Wow! Macs Really Are Overpriced

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 20

For a long time I have maintained that Macs weren't really that expensive compared to Windows PCs; it's just that Apple refused to make low-end systems. Recently, I've been suspecting...

Venture Capital Funding Enters Deep Freeze

Posted by: Spencer Ante on January 20

It's official: The venture capital market is freezing up. And don't expect the market to warm up any time soon. In the fourth quarter of 2008, venture capitalists raised only...

Google Drops Print Ads Program

Posted by: Rob Hof on January 20

Not having heard much at all in the past year about Google's Print Ads program, which let advertisers bid to place ads on hundreds of newspapers using a Google auction...

RIM: A Strong Buy or A Sell?

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on January 20

Is Research in Motion a good buy or bad one right now? It's looking like things could get pretty bad for the makers of the BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Storm...

Live-Blogging the Social Media Inauguration

Posted by: Douglas Macmillan on January 20

The 2008 Presidential Elections marked the first time that the various social media sites on the Web played a major role in shaping U.S. politics. Up through election day, average...

A Look at Adobe CS4

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 19

The price of software, at least according to the conventional wisdom, is rapidly tending toward zero. That may well be true for consumer applications and even some standard business programs,...

Another Reason Carol Bartz Joined Yahoo: $$$

Posted by: Rob Hof on January 15

When I talked the other day with Bill Coleman, CEO of Cassatt and a former colleague of new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz at Sun Microsystems, he said he was initially...

What New Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz Really Told the Troops

Posted by: Rob Hof on January 15

Yahoo's stock fell more than 6% today as investors digested reports on what new CEO Carol Bartz told employees during an all-hands meeting yesterday. Some reports indicated she said her...

Google Hunkers Down: Lays Off Recruiters and Possibly Engineers, Cuts Projects

Posted by: Rob Hof on January 14

Even Google gets the blues. In what might be seen as its first "real" layoffs, Google is cutting about 100 recruiting jobs, though some of those people may find other...

More Adults Joining Social Networks, Pew Says

Posted by: Douglas Macmillan on January 14

Some 35% of online adults now have at least one profile on a social networking site, more than quadruple the amount that did in February 2005.

Apple's Steve Jobs to Take Six-Month Medical Leave

Posted by: Rob Hof on January 14

Just a week after revealing that he has a medical issue related to his 2004 pancreatic cancer surgery that had taken a toll on his weight, Apple CEO Steve...

LIVE: Yahoo Announces Carol Bartz as CEO

Posted by: Rob Hof on January 13

Here's my liveblog of the Yahoo conference call announcing Yahoo's appointment of Carol Bartz as CEO: Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock comes on with effusive praise for Bartz. "Carol more than...

Confirmed: Carol Bartz Named Yahoo CEO: Can She Turn It Around?

Posted by: Rob Hof on January 13

UPDATED: After a two-month search for a new CEO to replace cofounder Jerry Yang, Yahoo has chosen Autodesk Executive Chairman Carol Bartz to get the embattled company back on track....

NSA, DHS, Industry Gang Up on Dangerous Software Errors

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 12

Computer security experts have warned for years that the endless cycle of software flaws and exploits will only be broken when we create incentives for software authors and publishers to...

Broadband Stimulus: the Case for Going Slow

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 10

President-elect Barack Obama, who ran as the high-tech candidate, has promised to make federal investment in broadband Internet service part of both his economic stimulus program and his plan for...

CES: Live TV Comes to the Car

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on January 09

Chipmaker Qualcomm has been quietly plugging away over the past couple of years trying to get its MediaFlo TV solution on more cellular phones. It has struck deals with Verizon...

CES: More on the Palm Pre

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on January 08

After watching the entire walk-through of the new Palm webOS and its implementation on the Pre (pronounced Pree), it's clear that its designers stole a lot of good ideas from...

CES: Shure Offers Microphones for the Masses

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on January 08

Shure, which has profited handsomely off the digital music player craze with its headphone lineup, is betting it can squeeze a few more dollars out of Web-connected consumers. The privately...

CES: Wireless Goes Mainstream?

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on January 08

Is wireless the new black for the consumer electronics industry? At the annual Consumer Electronics Show, the number of announcements from various companies certainly point to more uses coming soon...

Google Loses Verizon Mobile Search Deal to Microsoft--But How Big a Loss Is It?

Posted by: Rob Hof on January 08

Google just lost a big mobile search deal to Microsoft. On late Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the software giant's Live Search will be the default search service on...

Palm Pre Uses Wireless Charger

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on January 08

Yesterday I told you a little about Powermat, a company that specializes in wireless charging via electromagnetic induction, and which announced plans for products to come later this year. I...

Sony and Stringer Get Roasted at CES

Posted by: Dan Beucke on January 08

By Ronald Grover In Hollywood, they call it creative differences. In the world of trade conference salesmanship, it may just be a great way to wake up an early morning...

CES: Palm: Revival of the Fittest?

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on January 08

I'm sitting in the ballroom at the Venetian Hotel here in Vegas, and you'd think from the crowds with me that we are witnessing the second coming of Apple. It...

CES: Windows 7 Goes Beta

Posted by: Cliff Edwards on January 08

If Microsoft has one message they want people to take away from the annual Consumer Electronics Show, it's "we're listening." While the software giant didn't reveal any major surprises during...

PowerMat Launches At CES

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on January 07

About 18 months ago I wrote this story on an Israeli startup called Powermat which caught my attention for its wireless charging technology. Today I talked briefly with Powermat President...

Should the Feds Delay the DTV Transition?

Posted by: Olga Kharif on January 07

TV tech is hitting some speed bumps on its way into the Digital Age. One of the country’s most influential consumer groups is asking the government to push back the Feb. 17 deadline when so-called analog TV signals are due to go dark, making way for digital signals. The analog-to-digital transition has been a long time in the making, and Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, says people need a little more time.

Another Year, Another Round of Microsoft-Yahoo Deal Scenarios

Posted by: Rob Hof on January 07

A group of Silicon Valley executives and investment bankers is ginning up a new proposal to buy Yahoo, according to TechCrunch: Under the terms of the proposed deal, the investment...

Tweeting Washer: What's Old Is New

Posted by: Stephen Wildstrom on January 03

Make: reports that an enterprising hacker named Ryan Rose has modified a washing machine to post to Twitter when a load is finished (read its very uninteresting tweets here.) Sorry...