Netflix has apologized for the brief outage of its streaming service that happened last Friday. And that’s all well and good, but even better is that Netflix has started offering its users a small credit, applicable to their next bill. → Read More
This morning most of us woke up to the disappointing news that social news site Digg, once a promising destination for Silicon Valley talent, was losing 37% of its staff as well experiencing key executive departures.
While the usual armchair Twitter quarterbacks responded to the what the layoffs mean for the ailing site, another more positive trend was also evidenced; People making clear that the kind of top tier engineering talent that worked for Digg was welcome at a spectrum of high profile startups and full fledged companies. → Read More
Our buddies at iFixIt have torn down the Logitech Revue Google TV box and found what amounts to be a mini computer powered by an Intel Atom CE4150 1.2 GHz processor. Oddly enough, for a device with no storage space, it contains 5GB of NAND flash. → Read More
With car sales starting to inch higher and the threat of bankruptcy only faintly visible in the rear-view mirror, Ford is loosening its purse strings once again.
On Monday afternoon, the Dearborn, Michigan based company announced that it will invest another $850 million into the development of more fuel efficient cars and technology.
That cash, which is earmarked for 2011 to 2013, is still contingent on whether the Michigan Economic Development Council approves a robust package of incentives (due for consideration later this week). According to reports— if the package gets the greenlight— Ford will benefit from roughly $400 million in state incentives. → Read More
At face value, the HTC G2 for T-Mobile seemed no harder for the Android modding community to crack into than any of the handsets that came before it. Once the hackers really had a chance to tear into it, however, something strange started happening: it… repaired itself. Hacks could be made, but they’d disappear as soon as the handset was reset. Understandably, these temporary hacks just weren’t enough for some folks. Though much of the hardware hacking community is already attacking the issue full force, a group of users have come together to speed up the process with the oldest trick in the book: by throwing money at it. → Read More
Is this woman a time traveler? Never mind the fact that time travel is, indeed, possible, but this is just silly. It’s the latest Internet meme, and it shows a woman walking down the street, ostensibly as an extra in the Charlie Chaplin movie The Circus. But look closely? Is she, what, talking on a mobile phone? In the year 1928? Pretty sure mobiles didn’t exist back then. → Read More
Will Samsung ever be as big as Apple? Well, maybe “big” isn’t the word to use, maybe “hot”? You know what I mean: whenever Apple has a media day, everyone loses their minds, even if the event isn’t really all that special. The closest Samsung has gotten, I think, was this past September at IFA in Germany, where it announced the Galaxy Tab. Tons of people in the crowd&mdash:I was there, remember—and tons of heat online after the fact. → Read More
More bad news for Digg. Earlier today we broke the news that Digg was having a large wave of layoffs that cut 37% its staff, which came alongside the exit of Chief Revenue Officer Chas Edwards. We’ve just confirmed that Digg has also seen another departure from its executive team: Chief Financial Officer John Moffett recently left the company.
Moffett wasn’t a recently appointed executive hire — he’s been with Digg for nearly five years, which means he’s been there for most of the company’s history (it launched in 2004). According to his LinkedIn profile, Moffett has served as Digg’s CFO since 2005, and has led the company’s “financial, legal, and human resource initiatives as part of the executive team.” → Read More
Maybe you were drunk and decided it would be a great idea to hide your phone in the laundry hamper. Maybe you just didn’t see it slip between the couch cushions. Either way, you’ve gotta go somewhere now, and you’ve got no idea where your phone is. You’ve already asked your significant other to call your misplaced phone twice this week, and doing it again might make you seem downright irresponsible. How are you going to take care of a baby when you can’t even take care of an iPhone? WHAT IF YOU LET THE BABY SLIP BETWEEN THE COUCH CUSHIONS? WHAT THEN, GREG? Fret not. There’s a new site on the interwebs, intended solely to give your misplaced phone a ring. → Read More
UberCab — which was recently renamed “Uber” to avoid the appearance of marketing itself as a taxi business — has shared the full contents of the cease and desist orders it received this week from city authorities in San Francisco regulating transportation businesses there. → Read More
Back when T-Mobile announced that the Android-2.2-powered and “budget-friendly” Optimus T would be hitting their network, they got away without mentioning two important bits: pricing and launch date. Fortunately, they’ve gone ahead and remedied that this morning. → Read More
Three and a half years ago, Google made what seemed to be a pretty big $100 million acquisition: FeedBurner. You remember that company, right? They’re the ones that dominated RSS management before all of that real time tech came along and rendered it obsolete for many people. Today, Google is putting the real time paddles to FeedBurner’s heart in an attempt to rivive it.
If you visit FeedBurner today, you’ll see a “Try out our NEW (beta) version!” message in the top menu. Clicking on this will take you to the new version. So what’s new? The entire look and feel has been revamped. The new Home screen is loaded up with overview stats and alerts for the sites you run. But the real key, of course, is in the Feeds area. → Read More
Set aside several minutes of your afternoon to read Seymour Hersh’s latest article in the New Yorker entitled “The Online Threat.” It’s a long, long yarn on the dangers of cyber war. It begins with the United Stats’ utter lack of respect for the technological capabilities of China, and then goes on to address a larger question: is the U.S. prepared for any sort of cyber attack? → Read More
On stage at FailCon today, Jay Adelson went over his storied career from Equinix to Digg. Adelson kept emphasizing the fact that he had no regrets despite Digg having failed to pin down acquisition offers from both Current and Google, while the news broke during the panel that Digg had just laid off 37% of its staff.
I asked Adelson while he was onstage whether he wanted to revaluate his “no regrets” comments with this recently reported information, particularly with regards to selling the company early. → Read More
Last week we saw the carriers’ growth numbers for Q3 2010, and AT&T completely blew away Verizon with new subscribers. Despite mass availability of Android phones, Verizon only added 1 million subscribers in Q3, its lowest total in years. AT&T added 2.6 million.
It’s now completely clear why Verizon has finally capitulated and cozied up with Apple—even with tons of Android models, Verizon simply can’t compete with AT&T in terms of new subscriber growth.
Right now the question du jour among iPhone aficionados is how many net subscribers will leave AT&T and switch to Verizon once the iPhone becomes a reality in January 2011. That number is going to be a lot larger than people think for a series of compounding reasons. → Read More
Jolicloud, which set out to build a cloud-based operating system for netbooks, appears to be preparing to build and sell its own line of actual netbooks, too.
Tariq Krim, founder and CEO of the French startup, earlier today tweeted links to two interesting pictures.
As others are speculating, these pictures suggest Jolicloud is working on a proper netbook rather than sticking with just building software to run them. → Read More
Hello, gorgeous. A 2011 Ford Edge Sport just hit my driveway and I’m in love. This vehicle is a looker inside and out. It’s funny how much more modern this model feels over last year’s model — I guess a bit of sheet metal plastic surgery can go a long way. There’s now a large grill and sweeping headlights up front that define the rest of the crossover’s lines. Even the wheels got hit with the redesign hammer, going from wannabe-luxury to urban. The biggest update is inside, particularly at the infotainment suite. The 2011 Edge is one of the first vehicle’s in Ford’s line-up with a totally-redesigned center stack and gauge cluster dubbed MyFord Touch. Gone are the days of push buttons and analog gauges. This vehicle instead employs two totally customizable LCD screens on either side of a traditional speedometer along with a robust entertainment screen in the center of the dash. Think of it as the smartphone of in-vehicle controls. I would drive a Ford Pinto if it had this system. → Read More
How prescient! I just wrote that the dead-tree book is dying and a tipster sent us in this charming little site dedicated to the joy of paper – funded by a paper manufacturer, one of the biggest in the world. Domtar is the “largest integrated producer of uncoated freesheet paper in North America and the second largest in the world based on production capacity” and business, thus far, has been good. Like buggy whip manufacturers, however, the writing is on the wall – a great deal of the paper they spew out will soon be replaced by bits. While most of that information, including the lip-service to sustainability, is false, I don’t envy Dotmar’s position. They are a massive paper conglomerate and their bottom line is being attacked by a free newspaper app you can download for iPad. Their best customers for centuries are now, slowly, turning away from them. That said, the website is a ham-handed attempt (one example bit of advice “Senior Executives prefer print…A resume is a summary of your professional career, not a blog about what you had for breakfast.” That’s why they’re called Senior. Duh!) by an entrenched industry to keep making money. → Read More
It was just a few months ago that Digg dropped 10% of its staff. Now the company is making much deeper cuts – 25 employees will be laid off, a little more than 37% of Digg’s total staff.
This comes on top of news that Digg lost their chief revenue officer, Chas Edwards, earlier today.
I spoke with founder Kevin Rose and new CEO Matt Williams about the cuts earlier this morning. The company will be refocusing the Digg product, Williams says, and more announcements will be made tomorrow. → Read More
Unsurprisingly, the fourth quarter is usually the best sales period for the Kindle (and most retail outlets), but it looks like this year will be especially strong as more consumers flock to e-books. After announcing a new e-book loan feature last week, Amazon is revealing a number of new Kindle stats today in time for the holiday shopping rush. According to the company, sales of the new generation Kindle devices have already surpassed total Kindle device sales from the holiday season of last year (October through December 2009).
Amazon also said tat Kindle book unit sales continue to overtake print on Amazon.com. In the past 30 days, Amazon.com customers purchased more Kindle books than print books, which include both hardcover and paperback combined, for the top 10, 25, 100, and 1,000 bestselling books on Amazon.com. In fact, Amazon sold more than 3 times as many Kindle books in the first nine months of 2010 as in the first nine months of 2009. → Read More
