AMD treads water in Q1, promises a path to profitability
The long road to writing with black ink again may at last be coming to an end, said AMD's chief executives yesterday. But that depends on more than a handful of factors boding well, including Opteron CPUs suddenly giving it no more trouble.
There may yet be light at the end of AMD's dark tunnel, its chief executives tried to reassure analysts during its quarterly conference call yesterday afternoon. That light will start to shine in the second quarter, and could be pretty bright by the third quarter.
Google floats its own economy, with a 42% sales gain
With $5.9 billion in first quarter 2008 revenues -- a whopping 42 percent gain over the same period in 2007 -- Google is enjoying a wave of success at a time when a lot of other stocks are tanking.
"It's clear to us that we're well positioned for 2008 and beyond, regardless of the business environment we're in," acknowledged Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in a conference call with financial analysts yesterday. "It's also interesting to note that paid clicks growth is much higher than has been speculated by third parties."
EA extends the expiration for its Take-Two buyout offer
Electronic Arts said Friday that it would extend the expiration date of its $2 billion takeover offer of Take-Two buy about one month. The deal was originally scheduled to expire on Friday.
However, the Federal Trade Commission said Thursday that it was opening up a second line of inquiry on the merger, and so far Take-Two has rebuffed EA's offer. Now, the deal will expire on May 16.
Red Hat delays its global desktop Linux indefinitely
Mixing technical concerns with a truckload of business issues, Red Hat has stealthily acknowledged slipping its deadline for Red Hat Global Desktop (RHGD), which might have given it an edge against Novell's competing SuSE Linux.
Unlike the existing Red Hat Enterprise Desktop (RHED), the planned RHGD is aimed exclusively at small, reseller supplied implementations in emerging geographic areas such as Brazil, China, and India. Red Hat also sponsors a community project called Fedora, which develops and maintains a free desktop product.
Latest CTP of OXML SDK reflects its ownership shift
Microsoft is just another contributor to the OXML (formerly OOXML) community now, and today the work it has been doing to build developer tools for what's now an international standard, has been changed to reflect that new status.
Work at Microsoft on the system developer's kit for the OXML format suite continues mostly on schedule, with a Community Technology Preview released today in advance of a final 1.0 release now moved back a few weeks to June. But it's no longer the Microsoft SDK for Office Open XML Formats. Instead, it's just another effort (assuming there could be others) to build programmable access to Open XML formats, as Microsoft is now referring to it as just the Open XML Format SDK.
IBM denies internal plans of 'mass migration to Macs'
An IBM spokesperson today denied published reports of what he termed "mass migration" to Apple Macs at his company, claiming the only point of the test is to try to make IBM software products run well on Mac OS.
Although an IBM spokesperson did confirm to BetaNews this afternoon that Macs are now being piloted at IBM Research, he added, "A lot of the blogs out there are suggesting that we're planning some sort of internal mass migration to Macintoshes. But that simply isn't true."
Carmi Levy: Could Google take Microsoft's place, in every respect?
If an AOL + Yahoo deal were to be effectively brokered, then Google would be perceived as the ultimate victor. But is that really part of the company's plan, to replace Microsoft in the public conscience...and does it really want that role?
It is Yahoo that has skillfully advanced the name of Google as the possible spoiler for Microsoft's takeover bid, without Google ever having to lift a finger. It need not even be the alternative corporate parent: AOL is now being seen as the speculative alternative, in a deal that Google would presumably facilitate.
IBM software revenues rise 14%, led by Cognos BI tools
Although IBM's PC servers fell flat last quarter, its software business soared, especially in "branded middleware." IBM's Cognos BI tools, WebSphere middleware, and Lotus collaboration software all displayed double-digit increases.
IBM's latest quarterly financial results, announced yesterday, showed revenue growth of 11% to $24.5 million for the first quarter of 2008, with gains across most categories, including software, services, vertical markets and most of IBM hardware systems, but weak spots in IBM's System x PC hardware and System i midrange servers.
Questions abound over Mac cloner Psystar's legitimacy
Following its announcement of a $399 Mac clone earlier this week, problems contacting the company, a sudden failure of its online store, and changes to its Web site have raised some eyebrows.
A simple search of Florida's registered business listings indicate that the company filed with the state on July 6 of last year. The registered address is 10645 SW 122nd Street in Miami, with the apparent contacts Rodolfo and Roberto Pedraza.
Take-Two investors not pushing for EA takeover
April 17, 2008 3:00 pm EDT - Despite Take-Two's attempts to rebuff Electronic Arts over its proposed takeover bid, EA is still taking the necessary procedural steps to get the merger approved. On Thursday, it disclosed the Federal Trade Commission had contacted it for more information its on its proposal.
The FTC has not come to a decision on whether a merger would be anti-competitive, although EA obviously asserts that it is not. It said that the press release was neither an offer to purchase, nor a solicitation for proxies to be considered at Take-Two's shareholder meeting to take place this evening.
Major label artists become paid bloggers?
LA-based social media site Buzznet, which provides audio, video, blogs and editorial content about the popular music scene, has just received an equity investment from major label Universal Music Group.
Terms and conditions of the deal were not disclosed, but some are estimating the value of the transaction to be as high as $25 million, with both companies equally sharing revenue drawn from UMG's content on the site.
Yahoo indicates it's pleased with its Google test
There may have been a little extra cash flow in Yahoo's direction from its beta test of Google's AdSense in its own search pages. But whether you take that as a sign of a deal in the works depends on how you read the carefully phrased speculation.
In the mergers and acquisitions game, the key players typically establish back channels in the major media in order to give them reliable outlets for bluster. Yahoo's choice of late is one of the best, The Wall Street Journal; and this morning, the word from that publication is that Yahoo's initial beta test of Google's AdSense for Search, announced just last week, was apparently successful.
Universal details its Blu-ray plans for the summer
AT&T stores will debut the first Microsoft Surface displays
Beginning today, five AT&T stores nationwide will be showing off Microsoft Surface, the innovative technology where a sensitive tabletop interacts with the user in ways he never considered.
Though early reports mentioned T-Mobile's participation in the program, it's AT&T that will be first letting customers play with Microsoft's touch interface system. Atlanta, San Antonio, San Francisco and two stores in New York City are scheduled to unveil surface displays today.
MySQL contributors remain confused over Sun's Enterprise plans
The business model for MySQL is that someone, at some time, must pay for something. In this case, Enterprise users are Sun's paying customers; and at a conference this week, free users wondered again whether the other group is entitled to exclusive new features.
The debate over what paying MySQL customers should be entitled to that non-paying ones should not, re-ignited after comments made during a simple roadmap presentation at a MySQL conference in Santa Clara ruminated in attendees' minds for awhile, and then pointed to an otherwise obvious point: The features new MySQL parent Sun Microsystems intends to include in the commercial MySQL Enterprise edition will only be tested by paying customers, under what is probably a more common commercial beta testing system.
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