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14 May 2011 11:00

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Tech: What Sony should learn from this PlayStation Network mess

  • In the future, a blowback in the realm of cybersecurity might be known as the Sony Effect.
  • Bloomberg’s Michael Riley and Ashlee Vance • In a piece called “The Company that Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.” Oh God, let’s hope it’s called “The Sony Effect,” because maybe it’ll remind other companies why not to actively antagonize their hacking-focused users. In Sony’s case, they were a combination of litigious (going after two well-known hobbyist hackers and threatening many others) and incompetent (they apparently ignore security researchers who find flaws and left their network wide open to an attack). The end result is that a company that needed to learn a lesson about getting hackers on their side learned a very expensive one — one that’s shut down their PlayStation Network for nearly a month now. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 May 2011 19:56

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Tech: Sony’s PlayStation Network still down, will remain down for a bit

  • 04/20 The date that Sony’s popular PlayStation Network went down after a reported data breach — one which the company was initially mum about.
  • 05/08 The date it was supposed to go back up — over a week after the company revealed that users’ financial data was likely stolen.
  • ????? The date it’ll actually go up; the company promises it’ll be by the end of May, but we see how they are about keeping dates. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 May 2011 15:35

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Tech: Facebook and Google: A story of jealousy, bad PR and bad stories

  • Google You know, the giant company that seems to have their nose in everything nowadays. Could their success possibly be making Facebook jealous?
  • Facebook It seems like it. A PR agency working for someone tried to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers and bloggers. (Some may have taken the bait.) source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

12 May 2011 10:32

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Tech: Did the Justice Department hinder Microsoft? No. Outside forces did.

  • 93.9% Windows’ share of the desktop operating system market in 2002, after an antitrust settlement with the Justice Department
  • 91.1% Windows’ share of the desktop market today … as the Justice Department’s oversight ends; it’s like nothing actually changed source
  • » Then again, a lot has: The computer industry has evolved away from Microsoft’s model while still remaining tightly attached to it. With the growth of tablets and mobile phones (two markets where Microsoft simply struggles to stay afloat), and the evolution of open-source and Web apps into methods that get around Microsoft’s dominance, in many ways the company is weaker, even if we mostly still use Windows, even though OSX is probably better. Also, we think Google’s Chromebooks could chip into Microsoft’s market share in short order. None of these things are the Justice Department’s doing, though. The tech industry, instead, worked around Microsoft.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

11 May 2011 10:48

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Tech: When Google uses lobbyists, they use them for awesome reasons

While the food industry lobbies Arizona politicians to keep Happy Meals happy, Google lobbies Nevada politicians to allow self-driving cars. Awesome. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

11 May 2011 01:42

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Tech: College students are gonna love this Google ChromeOS news

  • $20 per month for students to get a ChromeOS notebook?!? source
  • » Wow, that would certainly change things: Could you imagine a kit-and-kaboodle deal like that, how it’d tear apart the hardware-centric power structure of the PC industry? This is the kind of method social media companies use to go after a growing demographic — but not generally hardware-makers. If Google’s deal is true, that’s $240 a year for a laptop which essentially works as a loss leader for Google. It’d also be an entryway into the business industry for the company, which could hand out dumbbooks like Google’s for super-cheap.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 May 2011 20:42

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Tech: Report: Skype held out for their magic number — $7 billion

  • Microsoft really wanted this. Microsoft right now is trying to do things to keep up with other faster-growing technology companies.
  • Bahl & Gaynor Inc. money manager Matt McCormick • Explaining why Microsoft went after Skype — offering a reported $8.5 billion for the company. They offered that much because they had to. Skype reportedly rebuffed any offers that were less than $7 billion. Steve Ballmer, during the announcement of the deal, suggested that the technology would be used for, among other things, its Xbox console, Office technology, Windows Mobile phones (where they could gain a real advantage, by the way) and corporate phone software. Skype is so widely-used that Microsoft could be sitting on the next generation of phone technology — something they need to stay in the game. (Also, a side note: Google was the only other serious bidder, but they didn’t get close to $7 billion.) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

10 May 2011 10:57

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Tech: Google’s cloud music service launches — without label support

  • We’ve been in negotiations with the industry for a different set of features, with mixed results. [But] a couple of major labels were less focused on innovation and more on demanding unreasonable and unsustainable business terms.
  • Google director of content partnerships Zahavah Levine • Speaking a sentence obvious to anyone who has watched the music industry do its thing over the past decade. Which is why the company chose to launch the service (called Music Beta by Google) first, and wait until later to get the content partnerships. While the service reportedly has much in common with Amazon’s cloud music offering, it reportedly was more robust in the form it tried to sell the music industry on. Maybe we’ll see that someday. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

09 May 2011 22:12

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Tech: BREAKING: Microsoft close to buying out Skype. Holy cats!

  • $7 billion for Microsoft to prove that they’re still in the game source
  • » The deal is close: Reports suggest a deal could be reached by Tuesday, which of course would be big. See, Skype has a huge userbase — around 663 million users — and they make billions of minutes worth of VOIP calls each year. Clearly Microsoft would be a better choice to own this company than eBay, but then again, anyone would’ve been a better choice than eBay.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

09 May 2011 10:27

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Biz, Tech: LinkedIn IPO could prove social media’s heft on the stock market

  • 7.84M number of shares of stock LinkedIn plans to sell during its IPO
  • $35 the high-end price the company’s shares could go for on the market
  • $3Bthe potential value of the company’s IPO — which is kind of a lot source
  • » Getting in early: LinkedIn is one of the first examples of a social media company taking its chances on the stock market, which suggests that Facebook — which is far more widely-used than LinkedIn is — could totally do well in the case of an IPO. The company, which announced its IPO intentions in January,  has filed to go on the New York Stock Exchange under “LKND.”
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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