Search Results

When it became clear that the iPad was seriously going to take off, some very important people at some very large companies made a decision: You are going to buy a tablet computer whether you like it or not. It doesn't have to be an iPad. Might be Windows, Android, webOS, or something not even invented yet, but you'll have one. They're the future. Everyone else wants them, companies are getting ready to make a pantload of them, and nobody wants to be the weird guy. Just do it. End of story...

The FCC has big plans for the future of broadband in the U.S. -- gigabit-per-second connections all around, vast expanses of wireless airwaves everywhere, rural access even in the booniest of boondocks, etc. But the main obstacle in its way -- at least for right now -- is that making that plan a reality means regulating broadband, and the exact legal power the FCC has to do that hasn't exactly been set in stone. The FCC claims to have the authority, but a recent court ruling indicates there is a lot of room for argument there. Sure, it could try to push forward with its plans, but every move it tries to make would get bogged down in a neverending debate with ISPs and the courts...

The saga of the leaked fourth-generation iPhone continues to unfold, but now the story's less about the phone itself and more about Gizmodo, the Gawker Media blog that drew massive amounts of attention and Web hits by showing it to the world. ...

I hope your friends have good taste, because if you're on Facebook, you're about to learn a lot more about what they like, what they read, and what pages they surf. So are advertisers. Facebook hosted its f8 developer conference recently, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg unwrapped new details about what the company calls "Open Graph." ...

To their credit, Twitter's executives are self-aware enough to know the company has been living sort of like a trust-fund child well past its metaphorical college days. Every startup needs some time in the cradle, of course, but when you're hosting 50 million messages per day and you still don't have a revenue plan, questions start getting kind of pointed. This is not lost on cofounder Biz Stone. He recently wrote on the company blog, "Believe me, when your name is Biz and you're a cofounder of Twitter, it also means putting yourself at the mercy of folks like Stephen Colbert who hit home runs with lines like, 'So, I assume that 'Biz' in 'Biz Stone' does not stand for 'Business Model.'" ...

At the CTIA conference this week, Sprint launched an attack in the Battle of Who Has More Gs. Its upcoming EVO smartphone will hit the market this summer with 4 whole Gs -- that's one more G than most of the best smartphones out there have right now ...

A few weeks ago we heard some chitchat about a few Google engineers taking home a new kind of set-top box to tinker and play around with. Not a big surprise -- Google guys tinker with everything. It's like DARPA combined with Wonka Chocolate combined with Acme from the Looney Toons. But now we're hearing a little more about it from a New York Times article. Google calls it "rumor and speculation" -- nudge-nudge...

Sony put PlayStation 3 fans in a tizzy by whipping out its latest controller, which it calls the "Move." It looks a whole lot like a black version of Nintendo's WiiMote controller, only it's got this big, clown-nose ball on the end of it ...

Microsoft did its best Woody Harrelson impression this week and set out to bag some zombies. The zombies we're talking about here are PCs infected with malware. The bad guys spread the malware around and then remotely control victims' computers as part of a botnet that can do stuff like send out spam email or carry out DDoS attacks. ...

Google would like you to know that it's very, very sorry that its new Buzz social network treated your social life like Procter & Gamble treats bunny rabbits. It's all a big misunderstanding. And by the way -- no one was actually harmed, no personal data was leaked, and you're the one who's confused, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said at the World Mobile Congress this week.

A few weeks ago, I was hearing rumors about Facebook opening a new email service. Looks like Google beat them to the punch, though, because Gmail just opened up a new Facebook service. Maybe not technically -- Facebook plays absolutely no role in "Buzz," which is what Google named its creation. Buzz just seems to feature some of the same social networking capabilities as Facebook, as well as some Twitter-like traits. In fact, Buzz is sort of like what would happen if Facebook and Twitter had a love child that Gmail adopted and raised...

Apple held most of the music industry virtually at knifepoint for years, and that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, especially if you were a consumer who wanted a legal way to get popular music at a fairly reasonable price: a buck a song, 10 an album, no exceptions. It was only about a year ago that iTunes let go of its dollar-store policy and allowed for a little leeway in its pricing. True, that leeway amounted to only a few cents per song, but the point is, for a very long time, it was the distribution channel dictating prices, not the publisher.

We're now in week two of Google's high-profile battle with China, and the stakes have risen high enough to catch the attention of no less than the U.S. Secretary of State herself, Hillary Rodham Clinton. She cheered on Google's stance in a speech Thursday, saying, "Censorship should not be in any way accepted by any company from anywhere, and in America, American companies need to make a principled stand. This needs to be part of our national brand." ...

For lots of U.S. Internet companies, doing business in China is virtually a no-brainer -- the market opens up well over a billion new potential customers. The only downside is the Chinese government's pet peeve regarding public dissent. ...

The 2009 holiday spirit seems to have faded for Google and Apple, who didn't waste much time getting back to the business of giving each other the stinkeye. First up was Google, which gave its Nexus One smartphone its first official public appearance. ...

3-D is definitely not just for cheesy drive-in movies anymore. It's done great box office with animated films, and that big 3-D sci-fi action movie "Avatar" coming out this weekend has won over a lot of early reviewers, at least on a technical level. ...

In making a move meant to enhance user privacy, Facebook went about things in a kind of intrusive way this week. As you know, the site started out as a college-kids-only social network, and the content you'd find on Facebook at that time reflected the demographic in all its boozy glory. ...

Comcast just bought itself a nice little present for the holidays: NBC Universal. The cable network will have a controlling stake in NBC once the deal is flattened out, and in return, it's giving General Electric US$6.5 billion along with $7.25 billion worth of programming. If everything passes muster with regulators, then Comcast will go from being a company that just distributes creative content to one that makes and distributes it...

Google just keeps invading new territories, and its latest target is your computer's operating system. It's officially released the open source code for its Chrome OS, an operating system that will turn up in third-party vendors' netbooks. Those devices should start selling next year ...

Intel and AMD have finally put a long and bitter disagreement to bed, and in the end, all it took was a little open communication and understanding, along with one and a quarter billion dollars. The two have been at it for years -- accusations, threats, lawsuits. AMD said Intel engaged in anticompetitive behavior; Intel said AMD broke its licensing agreements...