In this week's EIC Squared podcast, ZDNet's Larry Dignan and I discuss the latest news, including SAP's management changes, Dell's woes, Intel's new mobile chip, life extension for Windows XP, and Google's lottery winners.
As a wise man once noted, the waiting is the hardest part.
It's been nearly six months since Google sent ripples through the mobile phone industry with the announcement of its plans to develop Android, a Linux-based operating system. But after an initial splash, Google has been pretty quiet. So much so, in fact, that several representatives of companies within Google's Open Handset Alliance professed frustration at the ambiguity of some important details at the CTIA 2008 conference this week in Las Vegas.
Much is still up in the air, just a few months before the first phones … Read more
Microsoft and Yahoo executives took another run at trying to ignite formal merger talks this week, but failed to kick it into gear, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
Apparently, Microsoft says no dice to raising its buyout bid and Yahoo remains hesitant to open its books without a bump up in price, according to sources cited in the Journal.
Although it's unclear which executives are doing the merger dance, the meeting was held near Yahoo's headquarters, the report states.
The parties last talked four weeks ago, marking the end of what had been six … Read more
Companies bidding in the Federal Communications Commission's 700MHz spectrum auction are starting to talk.
The gag order that silenced those participating in the FCC's auction that ended last month was lifted late Thursday. Now companies are free to discuss their plans and strategies for bidding in the auction.
Verizon Wireless plans to use its newly won wireless spectrum licenses in the 700MHz auction to deliver 4G services, CTO Tony Melone told the wireless news site Unstrung.
Verizon Wireless paid nearly $10 billion for licenses in the C block, which are subject to a special FCC rule that requires … Read more
Google says it participated in the recent wireless spectrum auction not with the goal to win, but to help drive bidding high enough to ensure that open-access rules it had pushed for would be adopted.
"Google's top priority heading into the auction was to make sure that bidding on the so-called 'C Block' reached the $4.6 billion reserve price that would trigger the important 'open applications' and 'open handsets' license conditions," Richard Whitt, Washington telecom and media counsel, and Joseph Faber, corporate counsel, wrote in a posting Thursday on Google's Public Policy Blog.
"We … Read more
Web news aggregator Naubo might be one of the unholiest unions I've ever seen. It could also be one of the best places for news junkies to get their fix. The service is an unabashed visual copycat of Google News, serving up the latest stories from around the Web. The difference is that it has a technology slant, covering news on big companies like Apple and Microsoft, along with gadgets, Linux, and hardware.
What makes Naubo interesting is that it uses this same spidering technology for blog chatter as it does for regular news, so like Techmeme you get … Read more
Apple passes Wal-Mart, now No. 1 music retailer in U.S. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080402-apple-passes-wal-mart-now-1-music-retailer-in-us.html
As expected, MySpace unveils new music service http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9910344-7.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/ technology/03cnd-myspace.html … Read more
LAS VEGAS--AT&T's top wireless man told the Wall Street Journal at the CTIA tradeshow here this week that the company is considering using Google's Android handsets.
Ralph de la Vega, head of AT&T's wireless unit, told the Journal he has reviewed the technology closely and is "confident it is something we are going to want in our portfolio."
This is good news for Google, which benefits greatly from having as many carriers and handset makers as possible using its new operating system.
When Google announced it was developing the open-source, Linux-based Android platform last year, … Read more
Maybe it's just coincidence, but this week two executives have left major Web companies for roles in the music industry.
Earlier this week, Google VP of Engineering Douglas Merrill left to lead EMI's digital music initiative. According to his Google bio, his core background is in finance--not music and not really technology, although apparently he has done a lot of work in information security. Apparently, singing the Sex Pistols' anti-label song "EMI" to EMI head Guy Hands helped him get the job. Too bad MCA's gone--maybe I could have gotten a job by singing … Read more
Public interest groups, academics and members of the press have hammered Google for its lax privacy policies. The criticism has mostly focused on the log deletion practices and browser cookie policies at the search giant. Google claims that search quality and user privacy are a zero-sum game: deleting log data makes it more difficult to improve search results. Perhaps the company is right. However, there are several other pro-privacy steps that Google could take to significantly protect its customers--which it has not done, and continues to reject.
Over the last few months, a number of Google's engineers have issued … Read more
Internet & Media
Technically Incorrect
Technically Incorrect
Internet & Media
532Facebook Likes
471Tweets
281Google Plus Shares
The one stop shop for all things iPhone
What's the #1 music streaming-app for iOS? Who wins in an iPhone v. S4 faceoff? We've got it covered with iPhone news, rumors, app recommendations, and more.
Manage updates with the Download App