Netflix, eBay help trigger a further NASDAQ plunge
Sometimes when investors get the feeling in advance that it's going to be a bad day in the markets, it doesn't take too much bad news to validate their fears. This morning, some relatively minor bad news had a magnified market impact.
Early this morning, Netflix made some admissions that, on a normal business day, would be viewed as a minor downtick in an otherwise healthy company. It missed its nationwide subscriber goal for the past quarter by 3,000. No, not three million -- three thousand, with 8.672 million subscribers at the end of the third quarter.
Nokia's 'Comes With Music' tracks will be hard to move
Nokia's upcoming mobile music service may be called "Comes With Music," but the question many of its charter subscribers will be asking -- especially those who've already been burned out on DRM -- is, will the music stay put?
When the first word in the text of a contract is qualified with an asterisk, it's generally a sign that the document should not be taken at face value. And when that first word is "lifetime," "unlimited," or "free," it's a safe bet that it was placed there more as bait than a statement of fact.
IBM's 'Bluehouse' Web collaboration service enters free public beta
IBM is fending off a constellation of competition in "cloud computing" with a set of new services for developers and business customers, including "Bluehouse," a Web-based collaboration service which entered public beta today.
IBM announced today that "Bluehouse" -- a new Internet-based collaboration and social networking service based on technology from its Lotus division -- has emerged from private beta testing and is now in the open public beta phase.
Google, Yahoo agree to delay their partnership deal again
As the US Dept. of Justice appears to be preparing for an extensive investigation into the two search leaders' cooperative deal, Yahoo and Google have decided that another delay in their implementation is unavoidable.
October 11 was the date in which Yahoo was expected to begin making portions of its search ad inventory available to Google's AdSense. This was based on reports citing comments from both companies, although the exact timing of every event in Yahoo's new AdSense partnership with Google has only been known for certain to government agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, since the public version of Yahoo's notice was redacted.
Ask.com v. 11 tries new search technologies
After some re-organization in parent company IAC, perennial runner-up search engine Ask.com today announced it had also re-organized its search technology.
In August, Match.com's Jim Safka became CEO of Ask.com in a reorganization that saw parent company IAC spin off into three sub-companies, the "New IAC", LendingTree, and Interval Leisure Group. Now, the company is hoping users will hop on and try out Ask's proprietary search mechanisms.
EBay to cut 1,000 jobs, spend $1.3B on acquisitions
Online auctioneer eBay today announced plans to cut 1,000 jobs, while at the same time spending about $1.3 billion on three acquisitions: electronic payments business Bill Me Later and Danish Web sites dba.dk and bilbasen.dk.
Today's job reductions, amounting to 10 percent of eBay's work force, follow an earlier round of cuts amounting to 125 jobs in North America and Europe, including 70 at its headquarters in San Jose, CA.
Mono, the open source .NET counterpart, releases 2.0
Download Mono 2.0 for Linux from FileForum now.
Microsoft has said from the very beginning that it wanted .NET to potentially be a cross-platform environment, but it's letting the open source community tackle that problem instead. This morning, that community celebrates a major milestone.
Verizon study: User error the cause of more IT breaches
Security threats to businesses vary according to what sort of businesses ar targeted, according to a study covering over four years and 230 million compromised records.
Verizon originally issued its general Business Data Breach Investigations report back in June, but drill-down data on four industries -- financial services, technology, retail and food and beverage services, which together composed about 82 percent of the original survey -- merited a supplemental analysis this week. Some of the highlights:
Bill to investigate video content-blocking passes Senate
The FCC will start to investigate video content-blocking technologies, if a bill just passed by the US Senate clears the House, including not only the V-Chip but other technologies that don't work hand-in-hand with ratings systems.
Now that the US House of Representatives has passed the nation's economic bailout bill, legislators in that branch of government may have the opportunity to consider another measure already approved by the US Senate. By unanimous consent this week, the Senate gave its okay to a bill that would force an FCC investigation of content-blocking technologies ostensibly aimed at use by parents in screening video content across multiple distribution platforms.
New Sony Reader includes touch, but no wireless
Yesterday evening, Sony officially announced its third generation Reader e-book, equipping the over two-year-old product design with an upgrade that includes tactile sensitivity.
Competition in the e-reader market is getting exciting as we approach 2009. One by one, companies are rolling out their latest offerings, each incrementally building the list of standard features in the devices.
Was the Yahoo/Google deal a ploy to weaken Yahoo?
With the DOJ expressing skepticism over Yahoo's agreement to sell search ad space to its biggest competitor, a letter from a key US senator urging action could be preaching to the choir. What's interesting is that senator's theory.
In a letter to the Justice Department's antitrust chief yesterday, Sen. Herb Kohl (D - Wisc.), chairman of the Senate Antitrust Committee, advised the Dept. to maintain a close watch over Google and Yahoo as they initiate their search advertising deal, for two reasons: The first is something discussed quite often, that the deal could be used to drive up the price of contextual search advertising.
A mixed week for citizen journalists as Steve Jobs declines to die
Good news: Steve Jobs did not have a major heart attack this week. Bad news: A serious "citizen journalism" misfire may have caused several heart attacks for investors anyway.
The "Steve Jobs heart attack" rumor, which started with a single post on the iReport site owned by CNN and spread rapidly through the blogosphere and parts of the mainstream media, illustrates the downside of throwing the doors of a news site open to anyone -- even as the week's financial and political news showed how effective and intelligent reader news gathering and commentary can be when it's done right.
Payment standards body will let failed security protocol lapse
In what is supposed to be a fast-moving industry, a security hole in an encryption system for global banking has been open for seven years. Yesterday, finally, a standards body mandated that the hole must be closed by 2010.
In its latest amendment to its security standards document, the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards Council has agreed to finally discontinue the promotion and use of an encryption standard for wireless communications whose integrity was shown by security engineers to be easily penetrated seven years ago.
DC Metro transit system finally gets some bars
Both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have approved a bill that will give all cellular customers coverage in the Washington DC Metro transit system.
Several years ago I lived in Washington, DC, and relied exclusively on the Metro (DC's equivalent to New York's Subway, Boston's "T", and Chicago's El) for transportation to and from Northern Virginia for work. While it always seemed like I had a wireless signal in New York's subway, any time I was underground on the DC Metro, either on trains or in stations, I would be without signal. Those scant moments when the Blue Line trains were above ground while heading into Springfield, VA were the only times I could use my phone.
Apple seeks dismissal of Psystar's 'monopoly' counterclaims
In defending itself against antitrust allegations, Apple has filed a motion in US District Court denying counterclaims by Doral, FL-based Psystar that Apple is a "monopolistic power," and seeking a dismissal.
As previously reported in BetaNews, in the David vs. Goliath legal case, Apple has accused clone maker Psystar of copyright and trademark infringement and breach of contract. Apple charges, too, that Psystar made modifications to the Mac OS code that allowed the software to run on Psystar's hardware.
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