It wouldn’t be right to say that the ever-popular Macworld Expo has been struggling, exactly, but ever since Apple stopped being an official attendee, they have perhaps been struggling for identity. The old de facto Apple conference and expo has become a second-string event, with Apple focusing on retail and much of the ecosystem revolving around software.
With this in mind, the expo has decided to dig in and rebrand. First, a change of clothes: “The brand is evolving from Macworld [Expo] to Macworld|iWorld to illustrate that the show is about the whole ecosystem of Apple products,” says the expo’s general manager, Paul Kent. The pipe and double name are, I’m guessing, a temporary compromise designed to introduce the new name without spooking longtime attendees. → Read More
Atlassian, the enterprise software company, has really hit its stride over the last few years. Founded in 2002 in Sydney, the company has today built a solid base of 26,000 customers, which include some big names like Facebook, Zynga, Cisco, and Adobe. In July of last year, the startup raised $60 million from Accel to scale and ramp up M&A. Since then, the company has bought Bitbucket and SourceTree to allow developers to host their source code in Bitbucket (or any other hosting platform) and then manage that source using SourceTree.
Since the beginning, Atlassian’s goal has been to create software development and collaboration tools that enable enterprise teams to quickly and easily plan, build, and launch products. The startup’s flagship software products, like JIRA and Confluence, let software development teams take advantage of issue and project tracking in an effort to improve speed of development and code quality as well as giving those teams a single place collaborate, share, and discuss files, minutes, specs, mockups, diagrams, etc. → Read More
Google has already confessed that the Nexus S would get the Ice Cream Sandwich update, but if you’re not the type to wait — and really, who is these days? — you can load up a mostly complete version of Android 4.0 right now.
Yep, thanks to some intrepid folks on the xda-developer forums, you too can enjoy Ice Cream Sandwich on the Nexus S before its official release. Before you dive into the deep end though, be aware that your device has to be rooted before you can take part. → Read More
Twitter is testing out new design changes which makes the main Twitter timeline expandable so that you can see media and related information right in the timeline instead of off to the side or clicking off to another page. We’ve gotten a couple of reports about this change, which only a few people are seeing, (and Twitter confirms it is a “small test”). Patrick Bisch of Pinglio blogged about the changes and even made a screencast (which you can watch below).
The changes are subtle, but they manage to simplify an already simple service. You can “open” up a tweet to see how many people retweeted it, the threaded conversation related to that tweet, or related photos and videos. For instance, here is a screenshot of a reply tweet along with the original tweet
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Amazon’s third quarter profits are down a stunning 73 percent. The stock is getting slammed in after-hours trading (down $28 right now). And yet revenues were up 44 percent to $10.9 billion and on the conference call today Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak says, “We expect to have a record quarter in terms of device sales in Q4.”
As well it should. Amazon announced a new line of Kindles in September, including a tablet, the Kindle Fire. Orders for the new Kindles are double what they were the last time Amazon launched a new line, and it is “building millions more” Kindle Fires than it had anticipated, according to CEO Jeff Bezos. So where did all the money go?
Amazon is ramping up investments in the backend infrastructure to support all the digital media it expects people will want to consume on their Kindles, especially their Kindle Fires. It is spending a lot of money on both technology and content. → Read More
We’re big fans of the home 3D printer here. It’s a truly disruptive technology, though for now the cost is still a bit too high, and the uses aren’t quite practical enough, for it to be a household item just yet. But that hasn’t stopped people from putting it to good use.
Project Shellter is one of the most interesting applications of the technology I’ve seen. The project aims to produce artificial shells for hermit crabs using a MakerBot, which would otherwise have to be supplied by harvesting spare shells from the ocean. It sounds a bit precious, yes, but it’s indicative of a promising trend of using fabrication tech for novel and helpful purposes. → Read More
IBM’s board of directors has just named Virginia M. Rometty as the company’s new CEO and president, replacing Samuel J. Palmisano, who currently is IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer. Palmisano will remain chairman of the board. Rometty will become CEO effective January 1, 2012.
Rometty was previously senior vice president and group executive for sales, marketing and strategy. Rometty joined IBM in 1981 as a systems engineer. She was previously senior vice president of IBM Global Business Services, and then was promoted to global sales leader. In her most recent role with Big Blue, She is accountable for revenue, profit, and client satisfaction in the 170 global markets and for the company’s worldwide sales results, which exceeded $99 billion in 2010. → Read More
Amazon reported third quarter earnings today. Net income decreased 73% to $63 million in the third quarter, or $0.14 per diluted share, compared with net income of $231 million, or $0.51 per diluted share, in third quarter 2010. The e-commerce giant missed Wall Street expectations; analysts expected a profit of $0.25 cents per share on $10.91 billion in revenue.
Net sales increased 44% to $10.88 billion in the third quarter, compared with $7.56 billion in third quarter 2010. Operating income was $79 million in the third quarter, compared with $268 million in third quarter 2010.
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Live video streaming service Ustream continues to expand its presence in Asia with the help of major telecom corporations.
Today, the company is announcing that it’s teaming KT Corporation, a leading telecommunications provider in South Korea, to launch Ustream Korea. Ustream will be launching its new Korean portal in January 2012, with a new office opening in Seoul that month as well. The joint venture includes a new $10 million funding round for Ustream, which brings the company’s total funding to $98.7 million.
The bulk of that funding comes from Japanese telecom provider Softbank, which forged a deep relationship with the company in February 2010 and has invested 75 million.
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Even with Ice Cream Sandwich on the way, Android Gingerbread devices are still as hot as ever. That said, there are way too many Android handsets on the market to parse through each and every one, but that’s why we’re here. We’ve looked through all the latest Android smartphones to give you our brief thoughts on the pick of the litter. These aren’t full-length reviews, but rather a way for you to easily compare what we think to be the most full-featured Android handsets released this month. Hopefully, your shopping research just got way less intensive.
For the glorious and spooky month of October, we’re putting the following handsets on the table: Samsung Galaxy S II (AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint) Motorola Droid RAZR (Verizon, and maybe AT&T), HTC Amaze 4G (T-Mobile), and the Samsung Stratosphere (Verizon). While each of these phones run Android 2.3 Gingerbread, they all have something different they bring to the table, along with varying price tags.
Let’s take a closer look, yes? → Read More
Move over Motorola and Samsung. It’s HTC’s turn to send out invites to a mysterious press event, and we’re fully expecting to see the HTC Rezound (a.k.a. the Vigor) take the stage come November 3.
The Rezound, for those of you who have missed my near-obsessive coverage, is HTC’s next Verizon-bound LTE device. It’s slated to be the first stateside device to pack Beats audio technology, but it also confirms its geek cred with a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and a 4.3″ 720p display. Here’s hoping that the battery is up to snuff for this one. → Read More
Early in my tenure as product manager for the web servers at Netscape, we faced a terrible crisis. We just got our hands on Microsoft’s new web server, Internet Information Server (IIS), and benchmarked against our product. Microsoft’s IIS had every feature that we had, was five times faster and we knew that they were going to give it away for free. This might not sound so bad, but we had just gone public three months earlier with a story to Wall Street that said, “Don’t worry about Microsoft giving away the browser because we will make money selling servers.” Oh snap.
I immediately went to work trying to move the playing field and pivot the server product line to something that we could sell for money. The late, great Mike Homer and I worked furiously on a set of partnerships and acquisitions that would broaden the product line and surround the web server with enough functionality that we would be able survive the attack.
As I excitedly reviewed the plan with my engineering counterpart, Bill Turpin, he looked at me as though I was a little kid who had much to learn. Bill was a long-time veteran of battling Microsoft from his time at Borland and understood what I was trying to do, but remained unconvinced. He said: “Ben, those silver bullets that you and Mike are looking for are fine and good, but our web server is five times slower. There is no silver bullet that’s going to fix that. No, we are going to have to use a lot of lead bullets.” → Read More
SMK Electronics has put together a new capacitive touchscreen that’s designed to work not just with those wonderfully conductive fingers of yours, but also with gloved hands and perhaps more. SMK developed a new sensor panel structure that is noise-resistant, allowing for a clearer signal to be detected at high sensitivities.
But this isn’t the first touchscreen we’ve seen that works with gloves. → Read More
We’re but a mere 14 hours away from the long-awaited unveiling of Nokia’s first ever Windows Phone 7 handsets, and it seems they just can’t keep the spigot plugged. A set of images seemingly detailing not one, but two of the handsets set to be announced has just leaked out. → Read More
PROskore is a newly launched business network that ranks your social media activity and influence in combination with your professional experience in order to give you a score denoting your overall professional influence. At first glance, it sounds a lot like Klout, the popular service that measures online influence.
But unlike Klout, PROskore takes into account your business connections and actual work experience in its scoring methodology. It’s also built specifically for business networking purposes, allowing its users to focus on growing their companies. Meanwhile Klout, via its Klout Perks program, is more focused on help brands and advertisers grow their own businesses instead. → Read More
As the co-founder of Daisy Systems, the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, a general partner at Kleiner Perkins and the founder of Khosla Ventures, there are few men who appear to have failed less than the legendary Vinod Khosla. And yet, when I caught up with Khosla after he keynoted yesterday’s excellentFailCon conference in San Francisco, he confessed to me that he’d failed more times than he succeeded.
Failure, of course, was the theme of the day at FailCon. And Khosla had much else to say about failure – arguing that the teachers in American schools are all failures and suggesting that all experts are full of “crap”. In Khosla’s mind, I suspect, what’s so interesting about failure is that you have to experience it in order to be successful. And that’s why, he told me, the success of technology entrepreneurs like Jack Dorsey and Max Levchin is dependent on their earlier failures. → Read More
Not content to let Nike hog the spotlight, Adidas has launched the SPEED_CELL, a miCoach compatible shoe dongle that senses your foot’s speed, acceleration, and distance travelled. The SPEED_CELL works with multiple sports and fits right inside the shoe’s outsole.
Unlike the Nike+ gear, the SPEED_CELL is more focused on general sporting rather than solely on running. It offers a window on the athlete’s performance and works with the miCoach virtual coaching service to allow weekend warriors to get fit without depending on a fireplug-shaped man yelling at them through a bullhorn.
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It’s been proven again and again that Siri has a peculiar sense of humor, but what if there was something more calculating, more sinister hiding beneath that jovial facade? Well, dock your iPhone 4S into ThinkGeek’s new IRIS 9000 voice control module, and you may soon find out.
On paper, the IRIS 9000 is pretty straightforward — once the iPhone is in place, just carry around the included remote, and go about your business. Whenever you need Siri to schedule an appointment (or sing a song), hit the button on the remote and let your request fly. → Read More
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