Business

Google's Postini suffers prolonged e-mail delays

Some customers of Google's Postini e-mail security product experienced significant problems Tuesday, with reports of hours-long delays in e-mail delivery that are still affecting some customers.

Threads throughout Google's Postini forums spread involving the issue, which seemed to begin overnight on System 7--one of several systems used by the service--and was still affecting some customers as of Tuesday afternoon, although e-mail delivery had resumed for others. Users also reported problems accessing the management consoles used to log into the Postini service, preventing them from understanding exactly what was happening.

Postini, acquired by Google in 2007, offers e-mail security … Read more

NPR hosts unique Digital Think-In with Silicon Valley thought leaders

Forgive me but I have to plug something my company (Frog Design) is involved in. I'm only doing this because it is such a neat event: In collaboration with Frog, NPR will host a unique Digital Think In this Friday in our offices in San Francisco, bringing together 60 thought leaders at the intersection of media and technology to explore new approaches to content creation, distribution, and funding for NPR and NPR member stations.

Hosted by NPR CEO and President Vivian Schiller and Digital Media SVP and General Manager Kinsey Wilson, the Think In will harness the collective expertise … Read more

Goodness on Twitter: from attention-sharing to tweet fund drives to good mobs

Twitter’s “suggested users” list is a Who’s Who of Twitter celebrities, featuring the likes of Al Gore, Lance Armstrong, Ashton Kutcher, John McCain, Martha Stewart, and others with millions of followers. The New York Times claimed that a spot on the list would guarantee 500,000 additional followers and reported that social media guru Jason Calacanis had offered $250,000 to be listed.

Last Friday, Twitter did something remarkable. It added a number of well-known social entrepreneurs and innovators to this list, among them Social Edge, Skoll Foundation, Kiva, Matt Flannery (Kiva co-founder), Acumen Fund, Jacqueline Novogratz (Acumen … Read more

Brands in Public: the end of the conversation?

It was just a matter of time: "With brands turning into curators of conversations about them and brand value increasingly determined by the value of aggregated content, third parties might be inspired to hijack these very brands by offering curated conversations on their behalf," I wrote in early July.

And now Seth Godin and BzzAgent have done exactly this. The marketing guru and the marketing agency have launched a portal that aggregates conversations about brands and presents them in a unified public-facing dashboard that gives brands the chance to lead the discussion. Brands in Public translates the Get Satisfaction … Read more

Google adjusts to life with trustbusters

Google's greatest challenge as it heads into its second decade may very well be innovating without ticking off Uncle Sam.

The position taken by the Department of Justice two weeks ago on the Google Books search settlement marked the second time in about a year the U.S. government has taken an active step to rein in one of the tech industry's signature companies. Google now is in the process of renegotiating a deal it once called "a historic settlement," one that gave it sweeping and exclusive rights to digitize certain kinds of books that competitors … Read more

Are writers selling out to marketers? Alain de Botton's "Heathrow Diary"

For one week, Swiss author Alain de Botton was living the life I've always wanted to live. As the first-ever writer-in-residence of London's Heathrow Airport, he was working on his new book on site, observing, documenting, and philosophically charging the emotions and motions of the two arguably most interesting things in life--people and planes--in transit, in situ.

My own fascination with airports started at an early age thanks to the location of my parents' house. I grew up with planes taking off and landing at the nearby airport, and as a student I spent one summer vacation working … Read more

Report from the IDSA Conference: The End of an Era

by Jon Kolko, Associate Creative Director, Frog Design

I've just returned from the IDSA conference in Miami, and I'm both convinced that, in ten years, there won't be an IDSA conference to go to - and that isn't a bad thing. I don't mean this in a disparaging sense; I enjoyed the conference, caught up with old friends, made new friends, and learned a bit. But a trend that I've observed at past conferences is only more evident this year, and it's patronizing to continue to skirt what is becoming increasingly obvious: the … Read more

Yahoo reportedly considers deleting Zimbra

Yahoo could be saying goodbye to more than just search while it reinvents itself as a media company.

Boomtown reported Monday that Yahoo is willing to consider offers for Zimbra, the open-source e-mail company it acquired in 2007 for $350 million. Zimbra's technology has been incorporated into Yahoo's e-mail and calendar products but the hosted services it also offers haven't managed to get as much attention as Google Apps.

One of CEO Carol Bartz's priorities since she took over at Yahoo has been to simplify the company's broad array of businesses. Emerging along with that … Read more

London Design fest celebrates design art, business

Several colleagues of mine are in London this week to unveil the special TEDGlobal issue of our design mind magazine in a very special TED Salon on Monday, with the title "More Substance of Things Not Seen." The event will be co-hosted by frog design and TED, and moderated by Sam Martin, editor-in-chief of design mind, and Bruno Giussani, European director of TED.

It comes in handy for the frog delegation that this is also the first week of the magnanimous London Design Festival, an eclectic assembly of design-related programs, exhibitions, and parties all over town.… Read more

Recurring problems with Google Checkout

An important feature in Google Checkout has now been unavailable for almost a month, and some merchants are getting fed up with Google's automated approach to their concerns.

Google's ability to handle recurring payments, such as monthly subscriptions to a service that are automatically billed once a month, has been impaired since around the middle of August with little notice by the outside world. A customer first reported the issue in a Google Checkout forum in August, and others, such as Katie Braband, sales director at storage company Datto, are still unable to rely on Google to process … Read more