In a big blow to the case against Microsoft's allegedly confusing "Vista Capable" labeling program for PCs, the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday denied Microsoft's petition to overturn a decision granting the case class action status.
It may be exactly what Microsoft doesn't want right now, even if it ends up winning the case in the end: the symbolism of a mass of consumers taking up arms against the company, in dispute over the very heart of its value proposition for Windows Vista. Yesterday the Ninth Circuit ended the company's hopes of being able to face the plaintiff on the company's terms.
Organic CEO Mark Kingdon will take the reigns of Linden Labs on May 15, when chief Philip Rosedale steps down to become chairman of the board.
Rosedale had said that the company needed a chief executive with more operational experience when he first announced his intent to resign in mid-March. Although Kingdon may have not been the person many were expecting, he does seem to fit those qualities.
Microsoft has taken the wraps off a Technology Preview of its new Live Mesh platform, which promises to connect disparate devices so they can seamlessly share information. But beyond the surface, Live Mesh portends that Microsoft doesn't just want to compete on the Web; it wants to be the Web.
The brainchild of Redmond's new Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie and in development for two years, Live Mesh is a bold endeavor that, if successful, could change the way PCs and other devices interact with Internet services and each other. Microsoft wants data and applications to be accessible from anywhere -- online and off -- using any device.
Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie issued a memo to employees about the company's new "services strategy" that includes Live Mesh. He talks about how Microsoft has been transformed by the Web, and what changes are coming as a result. Be warned: it might leave you with more questions than when you started.
Microsoft's just-announced Live Mesh platform is a complex offering that can be difficult to understand, even to those familiar with the company's typical marketing-speak and software-plus-services buzzwords. In turn, we have broken down Live Mesh into some easily digestible bullet points.
- What is launching today is an initial look at Live Mesh's core experience for consumers. It has two key components: an online service that lets users register their devices, and a 2MB software client -- called the Mesh Operating Environment -- that links and integrates the service into Windows.
Exactly who should be buying whom? With only minimal mention of Microsoft from both Yahoo executives and analysts this afternoon, suddenly the "big deal" between the software giant and the portal keeper doesn't seem to be "on."
It is one of the biggest uphill battles in the technology industry, and last quarter, it seems "uphill" is the only direction Yahoo knows: Revenues up 9% on the year to nearly $1.82 billion, and gross profit up 11% annually to $1.06 billion versus Q1 2007. Operating income was down 28%, though actually that percentage can fool you: Last year's operating income at this time was low to start with, so the reduction is only $48 million. And the shock of the day, if there was one, is that this reduction was much less than expected.
The plunge in AMD's worldwide CPU market share in 2007 may have finally stopped in the fourth quarter of last year, according to the most recent statistics from hardware market analysis firm iSuppli.
Though the gap between it and Intel widened by 7.3 points of market share by revenue (as opposed to units shipped) for the total year 2007, the tick went up for AMD in the fourth quarter -- by pretty much as small as a tick, 0.3%, according to iSuppli's latest figures supplied to BetaNews this morning.
HP Upline hosted storage has been suspended for five days (and counting) allegedly due to some potentially disastrous bugs. Already, competing services are attempting to cash in.
The service from Hewlett-Packard offering unlimited online storage of user data was launched only 15 days ago, and has been out of commission for just over a third of that time.
The Mac clone company said Monday that it had begun shipping PCs that had been ordered during the week of April 7, while a news outlet confirmed the company indeed is building an office at its Miami location.
If indeed true -- it is not known yet since no one has reported receiving the Open Computer yet -- it would end a tumultuous week for the Florida company. Its online store was down Friday, but had returned Monday.
In just under 30 years, Seagate has become the first manufacturer to ship one billion hard drives, and it expects to double that number within the next five.
In recent years, worldwide shipments of hard drives has soared -- a statistic that's not surprising considering the advent of portable digital media players and rising demand for laptops, which are typically replaced much sooner than traditional desktop PCs, as well as online data storage.
Nokia's subscription-based music download service that was announced at the tail end of 2007 has added another major recording label's content to its catalog: Sony BMG.
Initially a partnership with Universal Music Group, Nokia's Comes With Music service offers unlimited downloads of PlaysForSure-protected tracks to those who purchase compatible Nokia handsets.
At the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco today, photo sharing site Photobucket announced that it is opening its API to developers, with the hopes of generating new applications based on its Web services.
The API allows applications to be developed which access a user's account, create and edit albums, upload, search and share content, and update metadata of media files.
With the myriad changes that had to be made to DIS 29500 before it could be approved by three-fourths of the ISO subcommittee's voters, there was a very high chance that by the time Microsoft saw its offspring once again, it wouldn't recognize it.
As a consultant for conformance testing agency Griffin Brown confirmed last Thursday, indeed, Office 2007 may require an upgrade before it can say it faithfully adheres to an international standard.
Apple has filed for a patent which brings instant messaging to the iPhone and other touchscreen devices it produces.
The patent's abstract describes the application as follows: "One aspect of the invention involves a graphical user interface (GUI) on a portable electronic device with a touch screen display. The GUI has a set of messages exchanged between a user of the device and another person."
In the burgeoning field of social networking, the prominence of the major players' brands is extremely important. But what signal does it send when a sister company of Fox pairs with NBC for its political news coverage instead?
In another curious signal of how warm the mood has been of late between NBC Universal and News Corp. -- normally considered direct competitors in the television space, though they're partners in the online video service Hulu -- the MySpace unit of News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media division has decided to feature political content from NBC News.