Roundup: Les Moonves rocks it for CBS, Google’s privacy dashboard gets hated on
CBS beats analysts with $207 million profit for Q3 — Bloomberg reports that CEO Les Moonves “is leading the industry” in getting satellite and cable TV systems to pay retransmission fees that may bring CBS $200 million by 2012 or 2013. Audience members heckled Moonves when he stepped onto the stage at Google’s CES keynote performance in 2006. It was almost too easy to pick on him for his awkward out-of-touch-ness with the Google fan demographic. But instead of being wiped out by the Internet, CBS now provides fodder at CBS.com for what may be America’s fastest-growing demographic: People who watch TV while surfing the Net.
Verizon adds a second Droid phone – The Wall Street Journal took care of listing the differences for us:
Droid Eris is cheaper — $100, compared with Motorola Droid’s $200 — and runs version 1.5 of Google’s Android operating system, so it lacks some features such as Google i Navigation. It has a virtual keyboard, like Apple’s iPhone, but no slider, and weighs about 4.2 ounces.
Executive summary: Spend the extra $100 for the better model.
Google’s privacy dashboard still isn’t good enough for Consumer Watchdog – John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog still isn’t happy, and who can blame him? He’s actually right that Google Dashboard, the company’s new do-it-yourself privacy tool, “gives users the feeling of control over their privacy without letting them see how Google tracks them all over the place.” It seems to be, as Simpson explains, cobbled together from pre-existing interfaces, and doesn’t tell users about all the data on them that Google collects. Google Dashboard is an improvement, but it not a solution.
Matt Marshall explains global vs local thinking in two minutes — VentureBeat’s editor-in-chief did three short spots for UPS on seizing opportunities. This second one summarizes the lessons learned by American companies that tried to move into Asia-Pacific markets. Matt is pretty good at drawing on the whiteboard. Yes, these are ads on a news site, but we’d be silly not to show them off.
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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.