Roundup: Schmidt is bullish, Yahoo spikes New York Times traffic, Windows 7 on a thumb drive
Google chief executive Eric Schmidt says it’s “reasonable to be optimistic for 2010″ — Reuters has more.
Michael Jackson traffic set off cyberattack alarms – Google’s automated defense systems interpreted a sudden tsunami of “Micheal Jackson” [sic] queries as an attack. I’ve gotten similar stories under FrieNDA from IT people at a couple of other places, too. We all went a little Jacko-crazy yesterday.
Windows 7 may be available on a thumb drive – Now that a significant fraction of Windows users are on netbooks that don’t have a CD or DVD drive, Microsoft is considering making it super-easy for them to buy and install an upgrade to the next version of Windows.
Yahoo link sends record traffic to New York Times — In two hours, a link from Yahoo’s front page sent more than nine million page views to the Gray Lady’s servers. What was the big story? A Home and Garden feature about a gorgeous circa-1800 farmhouse located a few feet from a freight railroad line.
Wikinvest reinvents itself as Yahoo Finance competitor — A new beta version of the site includes much more company drill-down data, plus embeddable graphics. The Wall Street Journal has an overview of the new service.
[Photo credits: Top photo from The Age. Bottom photo from NYTimes.com. ]
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About the Author, Paul Boutin
Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.