A future for eBay that's solidly on the back burner
Yesterday, eBay discussed with investors the company's outlook for the next three years. Fulfilling statements from CEO John Donahoe made nearly a year ago, the company's growth efforts will be spearheaded by PayPal, and will include more changes to the eBay marketplace.
Donahoe said, "We are aggressively remaking and transforming our eBay Marketplace and diversifying the ways in which we compete in e-commerce."
This aggressive transformation, however, has coincided with eBay's worst year to date. During 2008, eBay's CEO of ten years departed, policy changes caused an eBay seller revolt, the economy tightened the budgets of buyers, and the trade of counterfeit goods on site brought high profile lawsuits. The end of last year's holiday season saw eBay's net income drop $163.7 million dollars from the prior year.
Vodafone now offers DRM-free music
Three of the "Big Four" major record labels, Sony, EMI, and Universal, have gotten on board with European carrier Vodafone to provide DRM-free music for the wireless carrier's music store.
Music tracks downloaded through Vodafone Music were formerly protected WMA, but soon the company says it will be selling music as unprotected MP3s. Those who have already purchased music as WMA are eligible for free MP3 crossgrades.
Microsoft silent on whether version 8 will be the last Internet Explorer
This week, elements of the blogosphere drew speculative conclusions about a Microsoft Research paper released last month in time for TechFest, which concerned a prototype Web browser constructed expressly for the purpose of testing new concepts in Web browser user authentication. Cross-site scripting has, after all, been a security plague for nearly every browser at one time or another -- the ability for a script launched by one page to intentionally take control of a page in a completely different window.
Perhaps without even reading the paper itself (PDF available here), speculators concluded that it pointed either to the architecture of the next version of Internet Explorer, or that it somehow signaled the end of the Internet Explorer product line -- that somehow Microsoft, or Microsoft in conjunction with someone else (maybe the University of Washington?), would be making Web browsers for future editions of Windows but without the IE logo. It's a far, far extrapolation of a conclusion that could not possibly have been reached through any logical process.
Greener batteries: Li-ion cells could charge up in mere seconds
Like most people, you're probably tired of waiting hours for your cell phone batteries to recharge. But now, researchers have discovered new technology that reportedly not only charges up batteries in seconds, but enables the batteries to hold their charge well.
In an article published yesterday in the prestigious journal Nature, Byoungwoo Kang and Gerbrand Ceder of MIT report they have figured out a way to get lithium ion batteries -- essentially the same type of battery used in products from mobile phones to hybrid automobiles -- to release and take up lithium ion molecules in under nine seconds.
Amazon EC2 customers can pay up front to drive down hourly costs
In a move that could help cloud computing leader Amazon realize much of its revenues almost a year earlier, the company this morning announced an alternative payment structure for users of its EC2 cloud-based hosting service. For subscribers willing to pay up front for a one-year contract between $325 for a standard virtual machine instance and $2,600 for a CPU-intensive instance, their per-hour usage charges can be reduced around 75% - 80%.
The typical usage charge for a standard hosted Windows Server 2003 instance is $0.125 per hour, or $0.10 for Linux. Those charges will both decline to $0.03 per hour for subscribers who pay up front $325 for a one-year contract, or $500 for a three-year contract. "Extra Large High-CPU" instance usage charges drop from $1.20 per hour ($0.80 for Linux) to $0.24 per hour, for up-front payments of $2,600 for one-year, or $4,000 for three-year.
iTunes 8.1 adds multi-remote feature
Since the newest iPod shuffle requires iTunes 8.1 to function properly, Apple has released an update to the desktop music organization software. Though the update was brought around for the new iPod, the real benefits of the update go to multi-iPhone user groups.
ITunes 8.1 has eliminated "Party Shuffle," which is also known as "random," and has been replaced with "iTunes DJ." When iTunes is playing music largely at random, anyone with an iPod Touch or iPhone equipped with iTunes Remote (version 1.2) can request a song and vote when it will play. Betanews also attempted to use the feature this morning with Android Tunes Remote, but it looks like that software will also need to be updated to bring Android users into the DJ booth.
Final preparations under way for Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 public rollout
Download Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 for Windows from Fileforum now.
The rollout of what's still being called Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 is now under way, although Mozilla's official announcement to the general public is still forthcoming. In the meantime, the organization has been actively calling upon its contributors to give one final round of tests, for what it's calling a worldwide test day.
TV.com blasts competitors with 1080p streams
TV.com -- CBS Interactive's answer to video sites like Hulu, Veoh, and Joost -- has announced today that it is beta testing streams in full 1080p high-definition.
The beta site includes clips of popular CBS properties CSI, Survivor, The Late Show With David Letterman, and even a classic Pink Panther cartoon.
GAO warns that feds aren't ready for 2010 census
A trio of reports released by the US Government Accountability Office in the wake of Congressional testimony last week warn that despite numerous warnings, crucial technology still isn't in place for the upcoming decennial (ten-year) census.
The 2010 Census Day is scheduled for April 1 (sound off! 1,2,3,4,5...) and expected to cost over $14 billion. However, before the government counts us, it has to figure out where we are -- not to mention what constitutes a house these days -- and get its counting tools in order.
Google Voice debuts in previews for GrandCentral users
A trio of Google product developers on Wednesday night blogged the arrival of Google Voice, a new service for phone and voicemail management. The application, which includes such features as SMS text searches and voicemail transcripts, will preview first to GrandCentral subscribers.
Craig Walker, Vincent Paquet, and Wesley Chan posted the notice, advising GrandCentral users to expect changeover instructions via e-mail. (The rest of us can sign up to get on the invite list.) A full list of Google Voice features, including more mundane phone-service capabilities such as conference calling and voicemail forwards, is available on the site and demonstrated by a collection of short videos showing the service's integration with Gmail's contact list and an ordinary handset.
T-I-double-guh-Er...The unique and fierce Tigger Trojan pounces
A piece of malware known alternately as Syzor and Tigger.A is gaining interest from security researchers thanks to its unusual behavior, and from stock and options-trading firms thanks to targeting customers and employees in that sector.
Tigger takes advantage of a vulnerability in Windows' privilege-escalation fuctionality, a vuln reported in MS08-066 and patched in October. The privilege-escalation exploit allows the malware to override whatever limitations might be on the account. In other words, if you're sensible enough not to run your machine in administrator mode, this malware sidesteps your puny attempt at safe computing. But wait, there's more!
Cisco's plans might include data centers, might not include Flip camcorders
Speculation has been rampant this week around Cisco on a couple of fronts. The company is variously rumored to be (a) eyeing an acquisition of Pure Digital Technologies, maker of the Flip camcorder, and (b) planning the rollout of a data center server that will rival high-end offerings from IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell.
While Cisco was reticent about the details, the world's major enterprise router maker confirmed to Reuters earlier this week that a data center announcement -- involving new technologies and partners -- is in the works for this coming Monday. However, neither Cisco nor Pure Digital has confirmed to anyone that rumors of a Cisco buyout of the Flip camcorder manufacturer are in any way true.
New toolkit makes Eclipse into a Silverlight IDE
When Microsoft first introduced Silverlight a few years ago, it was with the stated promise of becoming a truly cross-platform development system for graphic interactivity and video. The full extent of that promise is still being delivered, in ways that many at the time hadn't really anticipated. The latest such crossover was previewed yesterday: a release candidate for an open source development toolset for the Eclipse development environment -- which itself is available in free and commercial versions -- that enables programmers to build applications that use Silverlight front-ends without having to rely on Visual Studio or Expression Studio.
Up to now, Silverlight has been considered a UI toolset that's made to be developed using Visual Studio. Now, Eclipse4SL from Soyatec -- a company that has received funding from Microsoft for this project -- gives developers tools for creating and deploying Silverlight panels, including the accompanying C# functionality and XAML interface code, that are very similar to their counterparts in Microsoft's commercial Visual Studio versions. All this in an environment that's better known as the IDE of choice among Java and JavaScript developers.
Here's something that sells well in a bleak economy: set-top boxes
Networking and telecommunications market research company the Dell'Oro group released research today that shows the IPTV subscriber base grew to 23 million, nearly doubling the total of the prior year. As a result, the set-top box business is booming.
Cisco and Motorola were the top STB makers in both cable and IPTV, and Thomson was at the top of satellite boxes. While Europe receives the most IPTV set-top boxes, Verizon and AT&T's aggressive IPTV marketing made North America a major contributor to the market's growth.
Dell confirms new layoffs, may number hundreds
A spokesperson for Dell Inc. confirmed to Betanews this afternoon that the company is undertaking a new round of staff reductions at locations worldwide. This in response to an official with the Dell desktop computer manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, confirming some 300 staff reductions there today, to the local NBC affiliate station.
Though it was couched as not an official announcement, the spokesperson told Betanews, "We did make some staff reductions today in North Carolina and in other Dell locations globally. Today's actions are consistent with the streamlining that has been underway in our business for more than a year as part of our ongoing initiative to remain competitive by enhancing our efficiency and underlying cost structure."
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