Yahoo raises the bet, may anonymize search data after three months
Early this morning, Yahoo announced that it will be reducing its data retention period to 90 days, a dramatic drop from its prior 13-month limit on keeping user search data.
Yahoo's Vice President of Policy and Head of Privacy Anne Toth posted on the official Yahoo Blog this morning, "Our content and advertising customization will remain cutting-edge and relevant to your interests -- but the data we use to provide those services will only be kept for as long as we really need it."
Microsoft: The IE threat is real, and so is the fix
Though it remains uncertain if anyone has actually been affected by an Internet Explorer browser flaw that has made national news headlines, Microsoft's tactic today is to treat it as though it's real, and respond the same way.
In a statement to BetaNews early this morning, the author of a Microsoft security vulnerability team blog post yesterday said his team is aware of exploit sites that are trying -- if not yet successful -- to discover the exploit for a problem that the company discovered in response to reports of an active exploit in the field.
Western Digital to lay off 2,500, close plants
Storage company Western Digital today joined the ranks of companies scaling back their workforces, announcing a cost restructuring that will involve a worldwide headcount reduction and closure of manufacturing facilities.
"We expect demand weakness to last well into the middle of the 2009 calendar year," John Coyne, president and CEO of WD said in a prepared statement. The company has seen increasingly competitive pricing from the likes of Hitachi and Seagate coupled with a decreased demand for hard drives overall. The projected revenue ceiling for the December quarter has dropped from $2.15 billion down to $1.8 billion.
ASA: EA can't pass off 360 graphics as Wii
The UK's Advertising Standards Authority has asked EA to cease broadcasting its commercial for Tiger Woods PGA Tour '09 for Wii. Although Woods himself "plays" the Wii, the graphics shown were from the Xbox 360.
In the commercial, professional golfer Tiger Woods is shown using the Wiimote to play his signature PGA Tour game, yet the corresponding game actions displayed behind him are from the Xbox 360 version. Though the message "Available on all formats" appears in the commercial, the ASA determined the implication was that a Wii game being played, augmented by the Wii logo at the end of the spot.
Adobe really reports record revenue
The software manufacturer reported record revenue for 4Q 2008 and a sixth consecutive year of double-digit growth, making Tuesday's earnings call much more upbeat than the announcement earlier this month of layoffs.
Adobe registered fourth-quarter revenue of $915.3 million, up $4.1 million from Q4 2007 and up $23.9 million from last quarter. Net revenue was $245.9 million, working out to 46 cents / share. Annual revenues were also record-breaking -- $3.580 billion, for 13% year-over-year growth. That's in line with the company's targets at the start of the year.
Palm denies its online store is new, stays quiet on Linux rumors
A Palm spokesperson today disputed published reports that the company is launching a brand new online software store. Less vigor, however, was devoted to rumors that Palm will introduce its long-planned Linux-based Foleo OS at CES.
Contrary to reports stating that Palm is following the lead of Apple and Google in launching a new applications store, Palm has actually been running an online store for quite some time, a company spokesperson told BetaNews today.
Apple to pull out of Macworld 2010, if there is one
In a completely unexpected announcement today, Apple Inc. stated that next month's appearance at IDG's Macworld Expo will be the company's last, as it scales back its appearances at other presenters' trade shows worldwide.
Monday, January 5, will be Apple CEO Steve Jobs' final address to the Macworld Expo at Moscone Center in San Francisco, the company said in a prepared statement today. The company has released no details as to why, though it's likely that the company will continue to produce its own rollout events, probably at Moscone, at times and dates of its own choosing.
Scrabulous case D-I-S-M-I-S-S-E-D
Hasbro on Friday dropped its lawsuit against Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, creators of the wildly popular Scrabulous game. Now, please stop saying "Scrabulous."
Scrabulous, which the Agarwalla brothers launched as a Scrabble-style game with a superior interface to others they'd seen online, launched in July 2005 and immediately made a major splash among certain Facebook populations, even encouraging some to sign up for the service specifically to play against friends. The trademark-infringement
Can XStreamHD pull off its 1080p on-demand service this year?
At CES 2009, a startup company called XStreamHD plans to demonstrate an innovative new satellite delivery system for on-demand, high-definition video...wait a minute, haven't we done this one?
Last January, we called it the "real deal" -- a digitally-streamed, on-demand movie programming service in full high definition, delivered via satellite. At CES 2008, XStreamHD gave the press, including BetaNews, hands-on demonstrations of an innovative HD streaming service -- maybe not quite "on-demand" in terms of time of delivery, but certainly a way to get high-quality movies of the consumer's choice delivered directly into the home, outside of the Internet.
Microsoft to issue out-of-cycle patch for the 'unknown exploit'
We're not even really sure if the reports of new exploits affecting Internet Explorer browsers are actually valid, but in case they are, Microsoft will issue a patch that addresses the problem those exploits may be targeting.
It's the kind of development that could give "zero-day" a whole new meaning: a wave of alleged Internet Explorer exploits, the total number of experimentally validated cases of which apparently numbers zero. Still, the subject matter is of some concern: the apparent ability of an ActiveX control -- for the dozens upon dozens of sites that still use them -- to leave code in memory after cleanup that's still capable of being executed without privilege.
Rather than fire people, Dell will reduce packaging costs
Dell hopes to save $8.1 million over the next four years by making changes to the materials used in packing and shipping its PCs. The new packaging will be formed from recycled milk and detergent containers, among other things.
Today, Dell announced plans to trim its costs over the next four years by cutting out 20 million pounds of its customary computer packaging materials.
Analyst: Sony needs fundamental changes
Sony Corp's shares closed nearly 6% down in Japanese trading today, after financial group Credit Suisse AG classified the company's stock as "underperforming."
In a reiteration of statements he made earlier this month, Credit Suisse analyst Koya Tabata wrote, "Compared to its peers both at home and overseas, Sony has been slow to react to the current crisis...We believe fundamental changes to its business structure are necessary."
Best Buy makes the best of a bad situation
Year-over-year revenue may be down 77%, "voluntary reductions" are underway, and the environment's difficulty level is somewhere between challenging and shriek-inducing. Still, Best Buy's Tuesday earnings call was remarkably upbeat.
The electronics retailer's Q3 2009 (not a typo) ended on November 29, and during that three-month period it reported profits of $52 million, or 13 cents/share. Sales performance on Black Friday was, however, not bad at all, and meant the difference between domestic results being down 6.3% and being essentially flat.
Microsoft prepares developers for ODF in Office 14
In a move designed to intentionally eliminate all surprises, Microsoft posted a detailed guide to its planned implementation of OpenDocument Format in the next edition of Office, to an interoperability Web site it launched last March.
By designating point-by-point how it intends to implement elements of the ODF 1.1 standard in Word, Excel, and other future editions of the suite still, for now, named "Office 14," Microsoft may quite literally be seizing the initiative. Specifically, by pre-empting its own effort in documenting how it will implement Open XML -- the internationally standardized derivative of the XML-based format Office 2007 already put in motion -- the company appears to be taking public steps to document what could easily become the most deployed ODF-supporting application come next year.
Toshiba, SanDisk to slash NAND production amid spending cuts
The world's CE products, especially portables, depend on flash memory. But even with demand continuing to grow, albeit less briskly than before, a global glut in NAND is forcing two of the world's top producers to cut production.
Amid warnings that the semiconductor industry as a whole could spend significantly less to retool and maintain their factories in 2009, two of the largest producers of flash memory said they will jointly take steps to make those capital expenditure cuts this month, beginning with a temporary shutdown of two of their biggest production facilities.
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