weekly

Week in review: Tough times ahead for tech?

The credit crunch is spreading from banks to Wall Street and industries beyond--and Silicon Valley may not be immune.

Troubles at two major Wall Street securities firms will have ripple effects that could stifle mergers and acquisitions in the technology industry and further dampen the market for initial public offerings. Or so say financial pundits who are examining the potential fallout of Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy, the $50 billion sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America, and the $85 billion loan to insurance giant American International Group in order to avoid its own financial crisis.

Venture capital and finance experts … Read more

CNET News Daily Podcast: What's Yahoo up to post-Icahn?

Yahoo got through the Carl Icahn crisis, but now it's tackling perhaps a more formidable challenge: How to make good on a promise to develop a next-generation, socially networked user experience. CNET News' Stephen Shankland, who spent major quality time with Yahoo executives last week, offers his insight.

There's a developing whodunit, but this much is known: Russian hackers suspected of ties to organized crime have targeted a popular BusinessWeek site with malware--possibly putting visitors to the site at risk.

Since we're in the final stages of Major League Baseball's pennant race--not to mention the start … Read more

What we Craved this week

Didn't have time to stay glued to Crave all week long? No worries. It's that time again: a quick roundup of some of the biggest stuff on Crave this week.

Steve Jobs was in town--and he brought some new stuff with him.

Samsung noticed it was the only one not making a Netbook. So it fixed that.

The DTV transition has begun, and CNET's John Falcone has some suggestions about how it could go a bit more smoothly.

Nintendo says it's adding a storage solution, but is being mysterious about exactly what that will be.

And … Read more

Crave: Ride a mechanical dolphin!

It's all the things you Crave! In this week's installment of the Crave vodcast, me and my guest, Bonnie Cha, talk about Hello Kitty madness, a Zune night light that plays music, and a laptop case that doubles as a pillow...the Napbook!

Goodrec launches mobile recommendation engine

The final start-up presenter at TechCrunch50 summed up many of the themes at the event--mobile, social, and on the iPhone.

Goodrec is a service for mobile browsers that features recommendations from people you trust. Rather than rambling reviews, GoodRec has a simple thumbs up, thumbs down, or mixed rating (no stars) and short text messages for evaluating restaurants, bars, movies, books, and other entities. The service also allows posting of photos and other content associated with making recommendations.

The challenge for GoodRec is getting distribution and users to create a social web of recommendations. Users are already giving recommendations on … Read more

Vivienne Tam and HP notebook collabo...that's hot

Hewlett-Packard and world-renowned Asian fashion designer Vivienne Tam have been working together to create the HP Vivienne Tam Special Edition notebook. However, anyone attending Tam's fashion show during New York's Fashion Week at Bryant Park Tuesday has probably already seen it.

The special-edition notebook--which looks to be an HP mini-note, except it's sporting a 10-inch screen--debuted with the usual fanfare a fashion show receives at Fashion Week, but with a high-tech twist.

Models sashayed onto the catwalk workin' the designer notebook as a clutch purse, while looking fierce in Tam's clothing.

The notebook is gleaming red and bursting with peony flowers--a signature staple of Tam's collection--on the lid. The peony design is then meticulously carried inside the notebook, under the keypad. The laptop also features a extra special enter key that bears the Chinese symbol for double happiness. The design was inspired by Tam's "China Chic" style, which is recognized from the runways in Milan to the Olympics in Beijing and represents her personal mantra to live well and be beautiful. The notebook also features a complimentary embroidered storage sleeve that helps keep the exterior protected while being carried as a clutch.

The "digital clutch" represents the first time a computer company has partnered with a fashion designer to create a notebook PC as well as have it debut at a fashion show. In addition to the design of the notebook, Tam worked with HP to design its accessories and packaging. … Read more

Fotonauts crafts Wikipedia for photos

An estimated 500 million images are captured every day, but less than 5 percent end up on major photo sharing sites. Uploading photos is not the easiest task and most photos are locked into a specific photo sharing service and have all rights reserved licenses. Jean-Marie Hullot, wants to liberate photos from silos and offer news ways to organize and discover images.

The former CTO of NeXT and Apple's application division, Hullot showed off fotonauts,a kind of Wikipedia for photos at TechCrunch50. Currently in private beta for Windows and Mac users, the Web application stores 1080p thumbnails of … Read more

This week in Crave-land

If you have a short memory or didn't have time to catch up on Crave this week (editor's note: for shame!), no worries, we've got you covered. Here's a look back at some of the truly interesting, strange, and wonderfully silly stories we Craved.

A Crave reader stopped by his local Fry's Electronics store, and all he got was this lousy 120GB Zune.

Stop saving your pennies, gamers. Word's finally out that Microsoft's Xbox 360 will dip below $200.

Dell made a decision: Asus' Eee PC shouldn't have all the fun. And … Read more

Week in review: Google's Chrome shines

Google made its long-rumored foray into Web browsers with the introduction of its open-source Chrome, but in the process, it ruffled some privacy feathers.

Word of the browser first accidentally leaked on the Web in the form of a detailed 38-page comic book that appeared on Google Blogoscoped, an unofficial Google blog.

The browser was written with WebKit, the open-source engine at the core of Apple's Safari and Google's Android. The browser is also getting a new JavaScript virtual machine, V8. It's said to be a better solution for complex and rich Web applications, yielding better performance … Read more