At last: Real photos of the Apple tablet
Plenty of fake photos have popped up of Apple’s tablet device, which it’s supposed to be unveiled later this morning. Now Engadget has a new batch of pictures sent from a tipster, which Gizmodo deems “the most likely suspect” among the photos the public has seen so far.
Well, we’ve heard from a source with inside knowledge that this is the real deal — the fabled tablet. Of course, you can’t actually make a whole … Continue Reading
The Other Guys: Who's going up against Apple's tablet?
Who is trying to face down Apple’s anticipated tablet this spring?
Here’s a partial list covering tablets from larger hardware companies like Dell and HP, along with lesser-known devices and a few e-readers. The pricing details and public launch dates aren’t available on all of these yet, so we’ve provided what we know and linked to deeper reviews.
HP’s Slate computer
This video demo shows the HP tablet that runs on Windows 7. HP is … Continue Reading
The irony of Scott McNealy's goodbye note
Scott McNealy is one of the legendary characters of Silicon Valley. It is jarring to read his goodbye note to Sun Microsystems employees as Oracle is poised to complete its $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun. In the email to Sun employees, McNealy said, “Thanks for a great 28 years.”
Both McNealy and Sun’s CEO Jonathan Schwartz are not expected to remain at Oracle after it swallows Sun, and both have now written goodbye notes.
I … Continue Reading
Zulily launches members-only savings for moms
Zulily is a members-only site where moms can find discounted apparel, furniture, and toys for their kids. The company raised $4.6 million in funding last month, and now its site is live and ready to offer savings.
Seattle-based Zulily is taking the “private sale” model from sites like Gilt Groupe and Rue La La, where members get steep discounts on fashion. When I spoke to co-founder and chief executive Darrell Craven in December, he told … Continue Reading
How do Twitter's local trends differ city by city?
Twitter rolled out “local trending topics” for all users today, giving people a peek into the most buzzed-about issues in their local communities.
Spokesperson Jenna Sampson wrote:
“The big events that come up around the world will always become a global conversation, but what about the big events that only happen in your world that only matter to those around you? Or the slight differences in the way Californians perceive an event, like Obama’s election … Continue Reading
Android developers mostly American; Windows Mobile developers mostly greedy
Distimo, a company that sells tools for app store analytics, released today its December Report, a State of the Union of application development, with a number of interesting findings about who’s developing apps and what they’re selling them for.
Much of what Distimo focused on was the geography of application developers. They found some surprising numbers. A full 65% of application developers in the Android Market are in the United States. Distimo thinks the number … Continue Reading
Newsday's $4M redesign signs up only 35 subscribers in 3 months
The ink-on-paper version of Newsday is America’s 11th-largest newspaper. It serves Long Island and Queens a workingman’s view of the news more akin to the New York Post and Boston Herald than the New York Times or the Boston Globe. Typical headline: “Cops: Doc Bought Cocaine From Nursing Assistant.”
Still it’s a serious and influential newspaper, read by an estimated 377,000 people daily — possibly the largest audience of any suburban paper. Bill Moyers used … Continue Reading
Heyzap's new menu bar makes Flash games more social
Unveiling more of its social platform for Flash games, Heyzap is announcing today that it is launching a social menu bar that can be used to simplify the process of signing into casual online games.
The menu bar, the Heyzap Social Bar, is a simple gray stripe that runs along the bottom of a web page and is only 25 pixels high. It gives a user instant access to functions such as virtual currency, which … Continue Reading
FCC seeks answers from carriers on early termination fees
The Federal Communications Commission today asked each of the major US wireless carriers and Google to explain how early termination fees (ETFs) are set and imposed on subscribers, in the wake of the doubling of some fees in recent months.
The FCC’s letters to AT&T, Google, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless ask each of them the same 12 questions about how the ETFs are calculated, how subscribers are informed of the fees, and how … Continue Reading
Video: McGraw-Hill CEO confirms Apple Tablet
Terry McGraw, the chairman, president & CEO of educational publisher McGraw-Hill, confirmed the existence of Apple’s iPhone OS-based tablet and that it’s coming tomorrow.
He told Erin Burnett of CNBC:
Yeah, very exciting. Yes, they’ll make their announcement tomorrow on this one. We have worked with Apple for quite a while. And the Tablet is going to be based on the iPhone operating system and so it will be transferable. So what you are going … Continue Reading
How Apple brought AdMob from zero to 4 billion-plus ad requests
On the eve of the announcement of what may be Steve Jobs’ magnum opus, the Apple tablet, mobile advertising network AdMob charted the rise of the company’s last blockbuster product, the iPhone, and how it was the catalyst for rapid growth in the mobile ad market.
AdMob points out that it wasn’t necessarily the phone itself that triggered growth in mobile advertising, but rather successive improvements like the software development kit and App Store. As … Continue Reading
Yahoo's over-the-top revenue leads to $119M profit
Way to friggin’ go, Carol! Yahoo’s fourth quarter revenues were lower than a year ago, but they beat the high bound of the company’s outlook forecast range, leading to a $119 million profit as opposed to last year’s $278 million loss. Chalk that up as another victory for CEO Carol Bartz.
Display ads were up 26%, the biggest gain since 2006. Search ads went up 8%, primarily because of improved targeting algorithms, the company claimed. … Continue Reading
Europe's Seedcamp startups seek to put down roots in Silicon Valley
The Brits invaded Plug and Play’s Sunnyvale campus Monday night to introduce a group of promising European tech startups to Silicon Valley. Six young companies showed themselves off to an audience of potential partners.
The event was part of a tour for the winners of Seedcamp Week 2009, a London-based competition for European tech startups that drew more 800 applicants this year. Seedcamp is a private-company incubator, much like YCombinator or the Founder’s Institute here … Continue Reading
Twitter creator Dorsey's Square counts Mayer, Rose, Dyson among angels
Square, the mobile payments startup from Twitter creator Jack Dorsey, revealed an impressive roster of angel investors today.
Among them: Google’s Marissa Mayer and husband and private equity executive Zachary Bogue, Foursquare and Dodgeball co-founder Dennis Crowley, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, prolific angel investor Ron Conway, Napster creator Shawn Fanning, Digg creator Kevin Rose, Delicious creator Joshua Schachter, Personal Democracy Forum founder Andrew Rasiej, a producing director of the TV show ‘House’ Greg Yaitanes, First … Continue Reading
Kyte overhauls its video tools to entice brands, publishers
Kyte, which provides a video publishing platform to media companies and brands, has overhauled its management tools so publishers can better control playlists and editorial workflow for their content.
Kyte is playing in an increasingly competitive and crowded space with rivals like Brightcove, Ooyala and Kaltura all vying to entice big brands that need a way to deliver video on their web and mobile properties. Kyte has rounded up clients like Ikea, ESPN and Sony … Continue Reading
Struggling with your dating profile? Let ProfileWiz write it for you
Figuring out the right part of your personality to emphasize on social networks can be a real pain. It’s even worse when you’re dealing with dating sites. (As a former member of OKCupid, I speak from personal experience.) But if the thought of completing a dating profile fills you with dread, or just leaves your mind blank, a new site called ProfileWiz can take care of that part for you.
The site was created by … Continue Reading
Is Microsoft getting ready to launch a "Zune Phone"?
Microsoft has struggled for some time with its Zune portable media device, but with the latest iteration — the Zune HD — it seems to have finally figured out how to differentiate the device from the iPod. Now Microsoft may be setting its sights on the iPhone by delivering a smartphone version of the Zune powered by Windows Mobile.
Speculation of a new mobile platform from Microsoft has been swirling about since 2008, but now … Continue Reading
CES closes the books: 120,000 attendees and 5,000 press trekked to Vegas
The Consumer Electronics Show drew more than 120,000 attendees and 5,000 press to Las Vegas in the first week of January.
That compares to about 113,000 attendees and 4,000 press the year before. That’s an indicator of a solid recovery in the technology industry. It also shows that CES remains the biggest global platform for launching new products in the technology ecosystem. Official audited numbers will be available later this year.
Gary Shapiro, chief executive … Continue Reading
Analyst: Apple tablet must create a new device category
As the hype builds about Apple’s big product launch tomorrow, which everyone believes will involve the unveiling of a tablet device, two analysts at Forrester are casting a skeptical eye on some of the excitement. Charles Golvin and James McQuivey write that the tablet sounds like it’s “flawed in meaningful ways: It’s a computer without a keyboard, it’s a digital reader with poor battery life and a high price tag, and it’s a portable media … Continue Reading
Verizon to cut 13,000 more jobs this year
America’s largest wireless carrier, Verizon, announced that this year will be much like the last two in that it will once again cut 13,000 workers. Nearly all cuts will come from the company’s wireline workforce of 117,000, the Wall Street Journal reported after the company’s quarterly earnings call.
“The economy won’t help us as much as we thought,” Chairman and Chief Executive Ivan Seidenberg said on the call. He expects things won’t turn around until … Continue Reading
