Yahoo's blues: Looming layoffs, tense call
Yahoo's in the middle of rolling out a new front page -- a phrase that ought to enter the lexicon next to "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic" if rumors of significant layoffs are true.
The rumor mill is having its way with Yahoo again this week, as talk of staffing cuts sets nerves on edge before Tuesday's quarterly earnings call. A report in The Wall Street Journal following days of Silicon Valley whisperings states that a person "familiar with the matter" (boilerplate language when the call is coming from, as they say, inside the house) expects over 1,000 jobs to be cut in coming months, while managers in-house have allegedly been asked to pare their budgets by at least 15 percent.
Taiwanese MP3 maker charges Apple again with illegal monopoly
Tenacious Taiwanese MP3 player company Luxpro has yet again engaged in litigation with Apple over its Super Tangent (nee Super Shuffle) MP3 player.
In 2005, Luxpro debuted an MP3 device called the "Super Shuffle," a screenless media player that looked nearly identical to Apple's First Generation iPod Shuffle. Apple won an injunction against the device for its use of "shuffle" in the name.
Analyst revises 2008 Blu-ray sales downward by 25%
Due to the stinging blows dealt by the economy these days, some analysts are now predicting bleak sales, both for the holiday season and 2008 as a whole, for Blu-ray players and many other CE products in the not-so-cheap category.
Back in about the second quarter of this year, Parks Associates predicted that Blu-ray player unit sales, not including Sony PlayStation 3 game consoles, would total about 5 million globally this year, up from about 800,000 Blu-ray players and 800,000 players for Toshiba's competing HD DVD format sold in 2007.
Flash's quirky 'two-second' bug still requires manual uninstall
Download Adobe Flash 10 Player for Windows from FileForum now.
How many times, the old Ronco TV spokesperson used to ask, has this happened to you? You're playing a Flash video in Firefox for Windows, and for a moment, you think it's actually going to start up.
Microsoft's Web Platform finally comes together
Apple's rebuttal chides Microsoft for not saying the 'V' word
Thanks to the depth of coverage given to Microsoft's "Windows, Not Walls" advertising campaign, Apple has come forward with its own ads addressing the palaver.
Humorous and to the point, Apple's advertisements echo comments frequently heard throughout the blogosphere regarding Microsoft's $300 million "Life Without Walls" campaign: "That money could have been used on fixing Vista," and "Why don't the ads address Vista directly?"
Social types Flock to Firefox-based browser
It lacks access to Firefox's vast collection of add-ons, but if your time online centers around social networking, Flock's browser may already have precisely the features you need.
The Flock browser is designed to manage one's ever-expanding presence on social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, and Twitter, along with more traditional online conduits such as Yahoo Mail and Gmail. The software's available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux; for now only English users have a 2.0 version available for download, but there are currently 15 international versions of the previous 1.2.6 edition.
Goodbye, Jamba and Jamster: Fox Mobile Group grows
When News Corp. and VeriSign came together in the Jamba joint venture in 2006, Fox Mobile's then-President Lucy Hood was slated to take over as CEO of a "new venture." Now, VeriSign and Hood are out and Fox Mobile Group takes shape with the former Jamba CEO at the helm.
Two weeks ago, News Corp. announced that it had purchased VeriSign's remaining share of the mobile entertainment joint venture Jamba, which is known more familiarly for its Jamster brand in the US, after having already a majority stake in Jamba in September 2006.
Is Motorola readying a 'social networking' Android phone?
About three weeks ago, Motorola disclosed intentions to BetaNews around building Android devices. Details have yet to be announced -- but now, some of the specifics might be indirectly emerging.
A report released this morning predicts that Motorola will release an Android phone with "social network friendly" features in early 2009. Although specifics around Motorola's first Android device have yet to be confirmed, the report could make sense in light of T-Mobile's stated intentions for a series of Android devices geared to different "user experiences."
Thomas mistrial raised in file-sharing defense
After last month's mistrial in the proceedings against accused copyright infringer Jammie Thomas, a defendant in a similar file-sharing cases is using the decision as a precedent for retrial.
Whitney Harper was not even old enough to be tried as an adult when MediaSentry discovered that her KaZaA shared music folder contained some 544 copyrighted songs available for sharing. Thirty-seven of these songs, from artists such as Madonna, Faith Hill, Brooks & Dunn, and Good Charlotte were included in the initial filing for summary judgment (PDF available here) against the 16-year-old's father.
SanDisk juggles its assets in advance of NAND flash downturn
In the latest indication that manufacturers are bracing themselves for the worst, the leading provider of flash memory cards for countries including the US is reducing its stake in two key factories where NAND flash is made.
It is a very safe bet that CE devices are already taking a hit in sales, especially including MP3 players, digital cameras, and any kind of devices that use NAND flash memory. SanDisk is a major supplier, representing more than one-third of US sales of NAND memory cards for devices that use interchangeable memory, according to hardware analysis firm iSuppli.
Fightin' words: What Web users searched and said during the debates
If you're tired of the election season, you "don't want to hear another word about it." The rest of the country, however, had words of its own to get out during the recent debates.
Google, which rarely misses a chance to show off a nifty search, has been tracking the popular search terms during the McCain-Obama face-offs and the Biden-Palin match. The site's Google Trends function doesn't offer sufficiently granular results as to see moment-to-moment trends (at least not to those of us outside the Googleplex), but the keepers of the official Google blog favored the Web with some stats.
Hands-on with Sprint's Xohm network in Baltimore: Does WiMAX deliver?
Sprint heralded the launch of its Xohm WiMax network in Baltimore last week by calling for the death of wireline broadband. But how does it stand up against cable and DSL, or wireless 3G services? BetaNews has been using Xohm for the past month in order to find out.
The promise of WiMax is nothing short of grand: blanket cities across the United States and around the world with 4Mbps wireless at a cost cheaper than existing services and with the simplicity of connecting to a Wi-Fi network. 4G wireless, Sprint proclaims, is an inevitable future. The company even offered a symbolic photo-op for journalists at its launch event: Xohm chief technology officer Barry West, joined by Sprint CEO Dan Hesse and other WiMax partners snipping an Ethernet cable.
Green-vehicle manufacturer Tesla does dirty by its staff
Tesla, the buzzed-about clean-tech electric car maker, has delayed its S-model sedan, demoted its CEO, and closed its Michigan office -- the last action, via blog post.
Even in a world were romantic breakups via text messages aren't uncommon, the message from company chairman Elon Musk has stirred outrage. Meanwhile, the nature of the dismissals -- the Rochester Hill, Michigan office housed the engineering team working on the new midrange ($60,000) vehicle -- raised eyebrows among some observers who see a pattern in canning the tech employees rather than the money guys.
Hubble Space Telescope crashes again, and fix may not come until February
The 18-year-old Hubble Space Telescope hasn't sent any pictures for the past three weeks, and fixing the system in outer space hasn't exactly gone as smoothly as NASA officials hoped. Restoration of the telescope's operations fot hampered by a couple of unexplained problems -- or "anomalies," in NASA-speak -- earlier this week.
On Wednesday, flight controllers at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD started to reinstate data transmsission for the telescope. To work around an inital failure that happened on September 27, the engineers began reconfiguring "six components of the Hubble Data Management System and five components in the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling (SIC &DH) system to use their redundant (or B) sides," says a Hubble status report.
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