Misc. Headlines
- Microsoft and Yahoo reach deal on search: The MicroHoo partnership finally went through, with a 10-year agreement with search and ads. Yahoo will use Microsoft's Bing search engine, while continuing to sell search ads. Henry Blodget called the deal "awful". I'm just glad it wasn't a full acquisition. I don't want Microsoft taking over and running Yahoo mail, messenger, finance, fantasy sports, and other apps. As important as the quality of the apps is my data on them.
- Amazon recalls (and embodies) Orwell's '1984': Apparently the copy was illegal, but the removal was enough to cause a high school student to initiate a class action lawsuit. Hey, I would have been upset too if I lost a book, and more importantly the use of my notes, if I were in school (but probably not upset enough to file a lawsuit).
- Senators push nationwide ban on texting while driving: I live in California, and texting while driving is already illegal here, so I'm fine with making it the same way for the rest of the country.
- Techdom’s Two Cold Wars: Great article on why Google and Microsoft don't want to invest too much in competing against each other head-to-head. The idea is to avoid mutual assured destruction.
- Factory worker commits suicide over missing iPhone prototype: This story is tragic enough, but one thing I find really sad is the fact that years from now, the version of the iPhone being developed will be as antiquated as the Walkman and VCR.
- Palm vs Apple on iTunes syncing: Palm and Apple have released multiple versions of their software, Palm to enable syncing between the Pre and iTunes, Apple to block it. Generally I think Apple blocks way too much stuff. I mean, if people want to use your stuff more, why not let them?
- Apple restricts Latitude to Web app on iPhone: Ditto on my last comment.
- Jailbreaking iPhone could pose threat to national security, Apple claims: Um, yeah sure. While this could be technically true in the strictest sense, aren't there a lot more important things we should be worried about?
- Twitter internal data breach: A hacker accessed Twitter internal documents via accounts of employees. TechCrunch detailed the anatomy of the attack itself, as well as some of the information in the documents (with Twitter's consent). There's lot of interesting information in there, including Twitter's plans to be the first to reach 1 billions users.
- Trent Reznor quits Twitter: I understand why he would want to quit using Twitter, but I think having the account deleted was a bit extreme. I mean, anyone who wants to stop using Twitter can just stop posting, and direct the emails straight to the trash. Oh well.
- Facebook gets $6.5 bln valuation with share sale: Existing investor Digital Sky will take a larger stake, and employees will be able to sell shares at $14.77 per share. It makes sense in this economic environment, with the IPO market practically at a stand-still. I wish companies would do this more often, it benefits employees (and therefore benefits the local economy) - even though in this case Marc Andreessen said in an interview that it would be a "mistake" to sell now.
- Facebook Farce: Top British Spy Exposed on Facebook: Wow, I am neurotic about exposing personal information online, but that is a real doozy.
- Apple Tablet: Sounds like the mythical Applet tablet may become reality yet. Speculation is that the device will be released in late 2009 or early 2010.
- Amazon buying NetFlix? This rumor hasn't panned out yet - instead, Amazon acquired Zappos.
- Creative Zii Egg Plazma is an Android-based iPod Touch competitor: From the pictures and video, it looks awesome. The zii.com site has information about the developer platform.
- 'Rock Band' to let users create, upload their own songs
- Microsoft to Open Retail Stores Next to Apple’s: I wonder whose PC hardware they will use to demo their software in stores. It would be a good opportunity for Dell, who only started selling PCs in retail stores relatively recently.
- Yahoo's new homepage design integrates with other sites, is more interactive: try it out at http://m.www.yahoo.com/.
- Twitter revamps homepage, followers list, following list: I like the new homepage, which has a nice design and emphasizes real-time search. The pages for signed-in users has not been resdesigned yet, so I'm looking forward to updates there.
- Major League Baseball has an iPhone app for streaming live games
- Google Voice Apps For Android And Blackberry
- Ghost released the beta version of its operating system in the cloud. I saw a demo of the web-based virtual desktop at Web 2.0 Expo earlier this year - even though I had a lot of questions and concerns, they had some pretty good answers for everything I asked about.
- Kazaa relaunches as legitimate music site
- Amazon acquires Zappos: Zappos is well known for doing things differently in business and providing excellent customer service. With this consolidation, I hope that spirit doesn't get lost. I've been happy with both Amazon and Zappos, but as a consumer it's usually better to have more choices, and competition is a good way to keep prices lower.
- Oracle Strikes Again, Buys GoldenGate Software: Not surprising, but really - will there be any business software companies (specifically in the SF Bay Area / Silicon Valley) left that Oracle won't buy?
- NetSuite (N) is acquiring QuickArrow and merging it with OpenAir
- Sprint Nextel To Acquire Virgin Mobile USA
- IBM buys SPSS in move to bolster analytics portfolio
- McAfee Picks Up SaaS Security Vendor MX Logic
- Yahoo! swoops for Xoopit email photo finding firm
- Firefox has had 1 billion downloads
- Facebook reached 250 million users. According to board member Marc Andreessen, they will reach $500 million in revenue in 2009. Doing the math, that averages out to $2 in revenue per user per year.
- VCs pass $100M in iPhone funding
- Apple has 91 percent of $1,000+ computer market
Earlier News
See my previous post for news from earlier in the month of July.
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