The business case for TimesSelect
Last month, the New York Times discontinued TimesSelect, the program that required readers to pay a subscription fee to read popular columnists and access the paper's archives. The news was greeted w...
Major pirate website shut down
One of the world's most-used pirate film websites has been closed after providing links to illegal versions of major Hollywood hits and TV shows. — The first closure of a major UK-based pirate site ...
For Wal-Mart, too, IT is a commodity
"I never viewed computers as anything more than necessary overhead," Sam Walton once said. Nevertheless, after I wrote "IT Doesn't Matter" back in 2003, critics would routinely present Wal-Mart as th...
In Search of Wireless Wiggle Room
I RECENTLY watched a YouTube clip of a young man removing the memory chip from his iPhone with his teeth, in an attempt to "unlock" the device for use on a network other than the AT&T system for which...
Comcast Is Pretending to be You
This AP story makes clear that Comcast is pretending to be part of online conversations in order to frustrate users who want to use particular online applications. This happens all the time in the na...
UN telecom panel endorses Intel's WiMax technology
ITU'S SUPPORT COULD HELP OPEN DOOR TO ITS USE IN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES — Intel's wireless technology WiMax got a boost Friday when a United Nations telecommunications panel approved its use as a third-...
The New Era of Semantic Apps
I'm here at the Semantic Edge panel at the Summit, moderated by Tim O'Reilly and featuring W. Daniel Hillis (Co-Chairman and CTO, Applied Minds), Barney Pell (Founder and CEO of Powerset), Nova Spivac...
CSI:NY Comes To Second Life Wednesday
Second Life is bracing itself for an influx of new members this coming week with the long awaited episode of CSI:NY does Second Life to be shown in the United States on Wednesday.The episode will see ...
The Google Way: Give Engineers Room
GOOGLE engineers are encouraged to take 20 percent of their time to work on something company-related that interests them personally. This means that if you have a great idea, you always have time to...
RealPlayer Exploit On The Loose
Yesterday we became aware of an in-the-wild exploitation of a previously unknown RealPlayer vulnerability. This unpatched vulnerability affects the latest versions of RealPlayer and RealPlayer 11 BET...
Christmas Music Parody - Blue Vista
Every year, I enjoy making a tech-themed parody out of a Christmas song. This year is no exception. Welcome to "Blue Vista". — We were talking about Christmas and Vista both in the chat room today...
YieldBuild Will Try To Pay You More Than AdSense
Simply slapping AdSense on your site is one of the easiest, but not necessarily best, ways to monetize your website. There are a lot of factors that go into getting the most out of your ad units. Th...
Don't Click On This Link Unless You Don't Mind A Grand Jury Knowing What You Read
from the privacy? -schmivacy dept — Apparently two executives from Village Voice Media (publishers of The Village Voice and other independent newspapers) were arrested yesterday for revealing grand...
RESTING MY CASE (AGAIN)
The company that wrote the book on the "walled garden" variety of web experience, AOL, laid off another 1,200 employees this week, a bloodbath by anybody's standards. And for those media companies ou...
Why Tech Blogging is Broken
Last night I attended a book launch party here in Honolulu. At that party I met a marketing person from a SEO startup who told me a little about what they were doing in the search optimization space....