Digital Trends
Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and a prominent antitrust lawyer urged a federal judge Tuesday to block a class-action settlement that would give Google Inc. the digital rights to a vast library of books.
As that coalition warned of a literary cartel that would lead to higher prices and less competition, Sony Electronics, a technology trade group and economics professors came to Google’s defense by depicting the book deal as a breakthrough that would make millions of hard-to-find books available to anyone on the Internet.
Phone maker Sony-Ericsson has been struggling in recent quarters, as its Sony-branded Walkman phones have failed to light up international markets and the company’s high-end handsets are increasingly being eclipsed by smartphones from a variety of other makers. Couple that with a general downturn in the mobile market and Sony Ericsson has seen its market share dip below 5 percent, leading to speculation the company might be split up and sold off in pieces or rolled back into its corporate parents.
First they said he’d be back before the end of the month. Now two reports have chief executive Steve Jobs back at work at Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters yesterday.
CNBC’s Jim Goldman wrote in the TechCheck column:
"Confirmed! Steve Jobs did report for work today, according to employees who have seen him on campus."
Reuters also quoted sources saying Jobs "was seen leaving the main Apple building in Cupertino and getting into a black car alone that was driven off by men in black suits with ear-pieces."
He was quoted in a press release on sales figures for the new iPhone 3GS.
The English language may not be the most common language on Earth—Mandarin Chinese and Spanish beat it out, for instance—but English has always been willing to expand its boundaries and adopt (and co-opt) new words and phrases to expand its lexicon. The Global Language Monitor estimates that almost 15 words a day get added to the English language, and today the organization announced what it claims to be the one-millionth word or phrase in English: Web 2.0. The phrase beat out “cloud computing,” “slumdog,” “noob” (no word on whether “n00b” was considered), and “Jai Ho!,” which landed in the 999,996th, 999,997th, 999,998th, and 999,999th slots, respectively.
Silicon Valley automotive company Tesla Motors has been making a name for itself with the Tesla Roadster which essentially takes the basic chassis, dashboard, and front wishbone from a Lotus Elise and wraps it around a high-performance, battery-powered electric car. And the Roadster does perform as befits a car that looks like a Lotus Elise: it’ll rev up to 14,000 rpm and push from 0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds. And it runs on the same battery technology that powers notebook computers: it might take 16 hours to charge, but drivers can get up to 244 miles out of a single charge. And because Tesla is located in Silicon Valley—and is effect
The economy is tanking, no one really knows what’s going to happen, but micro-blogging service Twitter keeps growing in popularity. It might not have found a way to make money yet, but there’s enough confidence that it will that two Silicon Valley venture capital firms have pumped $35 million into the company, according to the Financial Times.
Benchmark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners put up the money, and Benchmark partner Peter Fenton has joined the Twitter board.
Last year Twitter turned down a Facebook takeover offer of $500 million, and the new investment would indicate that the company wants to go it alone.
Launched yesterday at the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Long Beach, Singularity University is going to be an institution with a difference. Its chancellor will be futurist Ray Kurzweil, whose 2005 book gave the place its name.
It will be housed at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, and Google has donated $1 million to help fund it, while other big companies have also given money. But the tuition for the nine-week course will be a very hefty $25,000.
The king is dead, long live the…queen. Yes, after a search, Yahoo has named a woman, Carol Bartz, to replace company co-founder Jerry Yang, who’s stepping down as chief executive after a year of controversy.
It was Yang who turned down Microsoft’s takeover offer of $47.5 billion, worth $33 a share, only to see the price of Yahoo stock tumble to $12. Although Microsoft did return with an offer to buy Yahoo search, no offer has been struck.
You know economic times are tough when the high-tech firms of Silicon Valley are encouraging—and, in some cases, even requiring—employees to stay at home over the end-of-year holidays.
Technology giant Cisco announced yesterday that it will close most of its U.S. and Canadian offices for four days over the holidays as part of a cost-cutting move, and that announcement follows Hewlett-Packard’s recent decision to extend its normal one-week holiday shutdown to two weeks. Software maker Adobe Systems has also encouraged its employees to take a little extra downtime around the end of the year, and even Apple has asked some employees to take time off.
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