Yahoo! Appoints Scott Thompson Chief Executive Officer
SUNNYVALE, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)— Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), the premier digital media company, today announced the appointment of Scott Thompson as Chief Executive Officer, effective January 9, 201...
Exclusive: Microsoft and Nokia's Plans for Marketing Windows Phone in 2012
With predictably parroting that information—I thought it might be worthwhile to set the record straight. Microsoft and Nokia will not spend “in the neighborhood of $100 million” to market Windows Ph...
Kodak Preparing for Chapter 11 Filing
Eastman Kodak Co. is preparing for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy-protection filing in the coming weeks should efforts to sell a trove of digital patents fall through, people familiar with the matter said. ...
Rick Santorum's Iowa Performance Helps His ‘Google Problem’
Rick Santorum's performance in Iowa is good for his campaign, and for his Google problem. — Rick Santorum is the GOP presidential candidate known for his “Google problem.” A Google search of his na...
Google Android Market Tops 400,000 Applications
Google Android Market gave itself a nice new year's present last weekend. The total number of active applications worldwide in the Android Market reached the 400,000 milestone. Android Market has to...
Roku to Launch Cordless Streaming Stick for TVs
Roku, maker of competitively priced set-top boxes that stream Web video on TVs, is introducing a new device it thinks will offer a simpler option for Internet connectivity than some “smart” TVs. — T...
File-Sharing Recognized as Official Religion in Sweden
All around the world file-sharers are being chased by anti-piracy outfits and the authorities, and the situation in Sweden is no different. While copyright holders are often quick to label file-share...
The Case of the Unfortunate Underscore: How Twitter Verified the Fake Wendi Over the Real Wendi
I went all Encyclopedia Brown yesterday after I and many others had been led astray by an account — @wendi_deng — that Twitter had verified with its famous blue check mark over the holiday weekend …
Apple has hired Adobe's Todd Teresi to head iAd. Story coming....
How Pinterest Will Transform the Web in 2012: Social Content Curation As The Next Big Thing
The most interesting wave hitting the social web in 2012 is social curation. This was kicked off in 2011 as Pinterest's growth was noticed by Silicon Valley and a number of companies quickly followed...
Android platform distribution statistics updated: .6-percent or around a million devices on ICS
The latest Android platform versions distributions chart was announced yesterday after the Android Developers' website collected data for two weeks, and the share results reaped a few surprising figur...
Quanta Sues AMD Over Allegedly Unsuitable Chips for NEC Notebook Computers
Quanta Computer Inc. (2382), the world's largest contract maker of notebook computers, sued Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) for breach of contract, alleging the chipmaker sold defective products.
Some Venture Funds Hit ‘Pause’ on Big Deals
SAN FRANCISCO—Over the past year, Marc Andreessen invested in a series of high-profile Web companies, including Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Groupon Inc. Now the Silicon Valley venture capitalist i...
Disney and Comcast Link Up For Another 10 Years
Comcast has re-upped its distribution deal with Disney, which means the country's largest cable company will continue to pipe programming from ABC, ESPN and other channels into its subscribers' homes ...
Netflix's 20M members streamed 2B hours in Q4 of 2011
Down from 25M+ streaming subscribers, Netflix is poised for growth again in 2012 — As Netflix continues to wrangle the conversation on its future, the video viewing and rental company announced that...
The Guys Behind The Verge Just Went On Another Huge Talent Raid For A New Gaming Site
For the last week, there's been buzz about a new gaming site coming from Vox Media, the parent company of The Verge and SB Nation. — We can confirm that Vox is about to launch a big gaming vertical ...
2012 Mobile Industry Predictions Survey
First things first. From all of us at Chetan Sharma Consulting, we wish you and yours a very happy, healthy, and prosperous 2012. My thanks to all who participated in our 2012 Mobile Predictions Ann...
Cuba criticizes Twitter for Fidel death rumor
State media on Wednesday accused the social networking site Twitter of helping spread a rumor that former Cuban leader Fidel Castro had died, and criticized anti-Castro expatriates it dubbed “necrophi...
Apple's long silence on call mute issue raising ire of iPhone owners
Apple's iPhone 4S wasn't without its share of launch troubles, including complaints of poor battery life. But while Apple was quick to address said issues in an update (and then promised to do so aga...
Cisco's Alternative To Skype Has Quietly Been Killed
Cisco has quietly pulled the plug on its ill-fated consumer home videoconferencing system, Umi. This could be the final blow to the company's once-grand consumer plans. — Umi was introduced a littl...
More on Windows 8's new refresh and reset options
Summary: Microsoft is readying some under-the-hood changes for reset/restoring Windows 8 PCs, some of which will be part of the February 2012 beta. — It feels like eons ago, but back in June 2010, w...
Nobody Goes to Facebook Anymore. It's Too Crowded.
A year ago Steven Levy suggested that Facebook should give us each a single “friend-list do-over.” — A lot of commenters challenged him. “Grow some balls and just unfriend people,” said one of the ...
Yahoo Names PayPal Boss Scott Thompson as CEO
Windows Phone partners bet $100M on Nokia Ace
The importance of the Nokia Ace to Microsoft's mobile plans is apparent as sources tell BetaNews of a major marketing push for the smartphone in the second quarter of this year. The Ace will launch i...
Microsoft sues UK retailer Comet for ‘creating and selling’ counterfeit Windows Vista and XP CDs
Now this is highly unusual. Microsoft has just reported it's taking legal action against Comet, one of the two big high street tech retailers in the UK, for “creating and selling …
Spam Finds New Target
Facebook and Twitter Build Up Their Defenses as Hackers Attack Social Networks — Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. are building up their forces to fight an emerging enemy: “social” spam. — One of the...
Deloitte: 9% have cut cable, another 11% are considering it
Deloitte just released its sixth annual State of the Media Democracy survey, which (among other things) asks U.S. respondents how they get access to their content in a world full of new and exciting d...
Former Lotus and Microsoft exec Ray Ozzie hiring for new start-up, Cocomo
Ray Ozzie e-mailed earlier today to let me know that he has a post-Microsoft start-up, and he's hiring. But aside from mentioning that the company is called Cocomo and doesn't yet have an office of i...
Codecademy's CodeYear Attracts 100,000 Aspiring Programmers In 48 Hours
Talk about starting your year off on the right foot. — Two days ago, Codecademy — a startup that's looking to bring programming to the masses — launched a nifty initiative called Code Year.
Anonymous Have Begun Targeting German Neo-Nazis
The Anonymous hacking network has a new target — German Neo Nazis. — Deutsche Welle reports that the new operation is nicknamed “Operation Blitzkrieg”, and sees the group attacking a number of websi...
Embroiled in the Google sponsored-post debacle, Unruly raises $25M (exclusive)
Happier times: Unruly team poses for company photo — A five year-old company that seeks to deliver “awesome social video campaigns” finds itself embroiled in a hairy Internet pickle on a day that wo...
Samsung Series 5 Ultra up for pre-order in the US, brings optical media to the ultrabook for $949
Koreans won't be the only ones sticking DVDs into exceptionally thin laptops this year: Samsung's Series 5 Ultra laptops are now available for pre-order at J&R. The first time we heard …
Meet the spectrum bosses
If AT&T-Mo's failure taught us anything it's that if the big U.S. operators are going to grow they can't do it by acquiring each other. Instead they're going to have to buy up what unused spectrum is...
Spool Raises $1 Million To Let You Cache Content To Mobile And Push It To Friends
When Spool debuted at TechCrunch Disrupt in September, the app and browser extension was focused on caching videos, articles, and other web content to your mobile device. It was like Instapaper on st...
Spotify's Daniel Ek: The Most Important Man In Music
Spotify's Daniel Ek created a free, Facebook-enabled platform that could save the recording industry from piracy-and iTunes. — It's a typically damp, dark November afternoon in Stockholm, and Daniel...
Apple to launch iPhone 4S in China and 21 new countries on January 13
Apple has announced that it will launch its new iPhone 4S smartphone in China and 21 additional countries on January 13, ensuring that the handset will become available in over 90 countries since it l...
Are You The World's Best Programmer? Compete In Facebook's 2012 Hacker Cup
Facebook has announced its 2012 Hacker Cup, a global computer programming competition. The event will serve as an important recruiting tool to attract great coders to the company, which is constantly...
No Warrant Needed for GPS Monitoring, Judge Rules
A Missouri federal judge ruled the FBI did not need a warrant to secretly attach a GPS monitoring device to a suspect's car to track his public movements for two months. — The ruling, upholding fede...
Misconceptions About iOS Multitasking
There is one iOS “tip” that I keep hearing and it is wrong. Worse, I keep hearing it from supposedly authoritative sources. I have even heard it from the lips of Apple “Geniuses” in stores. — Here...
Defensive search-and-destroy “virus” delivered to Japanese government
It took three years and 178.5 million yen (around $2.3 m) to develop a defensive cyber weapon that can track down the sources of cyber attacks and disable them, but Fujitsu apparently did it.
How Getting Featured in the Android Market Boosted RunKeeper App Downloads by 637%
When the clock struck midnight this weekend, ringing in the New Year, social feeds lit up with New Year's resolution chatter. And RunKeeper's inbox lit up with news that we'd been featured in the And...