techfile 19.6.09

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June 19, 2009 5:00 am by Richard Waters

The Federal Communications Commission said it would look into the exclusive ties in the US that have limited some mobile handsets to particular operators. The promise came as AT&T prepared to welcome another spate of new customers, thanks to its exclusive deal to carry the iPhone in the US. Three students were the first to start lining up to buy the iPhone 3G S in New York, arriving 24 hours before the official Friday morning launch of the device. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster predicted sales of 500,000 this weekend.
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Tags: apple, AT&T, BlackBerry, FCC, iphone
Posted in Techfile | Permalink

techfile 17.6.09

June 17, 2009 5:00 am by Richard Waters

After reported intervention by the US State department, Twitter delayed a scheduled maintenance outage so that its service would be available to help disseminate the message from protesters in Iran. With journalists there operating under increasingly heavy restrictions, the micro-blogging service has come to play an important role.
How do you salvage a former internet star that has been flirting with irrelevance? Sack nearly a third of the staff. That was the first move by new MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta on Tuesday as he tried to bring entrepreneurial drive back to the social networking site.
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Tags: adobe, Facebook, Gmail, google, Iran, MySpace, twitter
Posted in Tech, Techfile | Permalink

techfile 16.6.09

June 16, 2009 6:00 am by Chris Nuttall

Facebook, which overtook its social networking rival MySpace in global users last year, has now surpassed it in the US, according to the comScore research firm. Facebook users almost doubled in the space of a year to 70.28m, while MySpace members fell 5 per cent to 70.26m.
Mobile payments are becoming a hot area for investment. San Francisco-based Boku has launched with an announcement of $13m in funding from Benchmark Capital, Khosla Ventures and Index Ventures. It also said it had acquired Paymo and Mobillcash, two other mobile payments companies. In March, Nokia made a $70m investment in Obopay.
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Tags: Flickr, Hunch
Posted in Hardware, Internet, Techfile | Permalink

techfile 11.6.09

June 11, 2009 5:00 am by morning call

Access to the internet is a human right. So said France‘s constitutional council, striking down a controversial law that would have given officials the power to block the internet access of persistent copyright violators. The government of Nicolas Sarkozy had sided with content creators in backing the idea.
Palm completed its Apple make-over. Jon Rubinstein, the former Apple wizard brought in to mastermind the well-received Pre, was named chief executive officer, taking over from Ed Colligan.
Microsoft is to stop selling its Money personal finance software, according to Cnet. Money has never achieved the same popularity as Quicken from Intuit, a company it once tried to buy. Microsoft had signalled its fading interest in the product by failing to take it online as Quicken has done, to compete with newcomers such as Mint.com.
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Tags: France, google, microsoft, Palm, Runinstein, Web 2.0
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techfile 10.06.09

June 10, 2009 6:00 am by morning call

EMC continues to court Data Domain. Joe Tucci, EMC’s chief executive, today took the unusual step of writing an open letter to Data Domain employees, explaining why their company would fare better with EMC than with rival NetApp. It was an opportunity for Mr Tucci to plead his case, but of course he’s barking up the wrong tree. It is Data Domain’s board, not its employees, who will decide its fate. Data Domain has agreed to a hybrid offer of $30 a share from NetApp. EMC has in a $30 all-cash offer, which looks to be superior. Data Domain said it will respond to the EMC offer by June 16. Stay tuned.
Google opened up another front in its broadening war with Microsoft today as the search leader made its increasingly popular Gmail, contacts and calendar applications compatible with Microsoft’s ubiquitous Outlook system. Outlook isn’t going away any time soon, but the move by Google means that Microsoft has one more piece of turf to worry about protecting.
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Tags: apple, Data Domain, EMC, google, iphone, microsoft, Netapp, nokia
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techfile 9.06.09

June 9, 2009 6:00 am by morning call

Apple revealed a new suite of iPhones, bringing down the price on the base model and introducing more advanced versions in a bid to cement its technology lead and capture a larger share of the smartphone market. The company also dramatically cut prices on its family of laptop computers and introduced a new desktop operating system, Snow Leopard. But there was no sign of Apple’s closely-watched chief executive, Steve Jobs, who has been on medical leave since January.
In another sign of the depth of the distrust between Microsoft and Brussels, European regulators have asked PC makers whether the software company tried to pressure them to lobby in its favour in Brussels. Microsoft brushed off the suggestion, claiming that the manufacturers had their own independent concerns about a Commission proposal which may force them to offer a choice of browsers to PC buyers. “We have encouraged them to share their concerns with the Commission,” Microsoft added.
Yahoo chief executive Carol Bartz put to rest any speculation that talks were ongoing between her company and AOL. Asked on Fox about the possibility of a Yahoo / AOL combination, Ms Bartz said, “Not any time in the forever future. Yahoo is a much stronger property in a different direction, and there’s no sense confusing all that.”

Tags: apple, Carol Bartz, iphone, microsoft, snow leopard, Steve Jobs, Yahoo
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Apple unveils new iPhone – live coverage

June 8, 2009 8:05 pm by Chris Nuttall

Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference opened today with intense speculation that a new iPhone would be unveiled when Phil Schiller, its vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, briefed the media at 10am Pacific time.

All we knew officially was that Apple would discuss the latest version of its operating system – Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard – and talk more about the 3.0 version of the iPhone OS. A new iPhone would have been no surprise, and we expected a cheaper version to be announced as soon as today. Any appearance by chief executive Steve Jobs, on medical leave till the end of this month, would have been a sensation. Here’s how the event unfolded, with our live blogging from the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

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Tags: apple, iphone
Posted in Consumer Electronics, Digital media, Hardware, Mobile, Software, Tech Finance, Techfile | Permalink

techfile 5.06.09

June 5, 2009 6:00 am by morning call

Intel paid $884m in cash for Wind River Systems, a software company that should help the chipmaker’s push into new markets. Wind River, based in the San Francisco Bay area, represents Intel’s biggest acquisition in the four-year tenure of Paul Otellini as chief executive.
Data Domain said it would evaluate EMC‘s all cash $30 a share offer, a day after saying it had agreed to an offer of $30 in cash and stock from NetApp. The unusual reversal signaled potential discord within Data Domain’s management. EMC has significantly more free cash than NetApp, and is well-positioned to win the bidding war.
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Tags: apple, Data Domain, EMC, intel, iphone, microsoft, Netapp, Nintendo, Palm, Paul Otellini, pre, Sony, Wii, Wind River Systems
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techfile 4.06.09

June 4, 2009 5:00 am by morning call

If Carol Bartz is trying to cozy up to Microsoft, she certainly wasn’t showing it on Wednesday. Speaking at a Bank of America investment conference, the Yahoo CEO dismissed the new Bing “decision engine” with faint praise and predicted that it would have no impact on Microsoft’s status as an also-ran in the search business. She also suggested that some estimates of the cost-savings from a search pact with Microsoft had been overstated, and a deal would probably save Yahoo around $500m.
Google and Yahoo confirmed that they were among a number of tech companies to have received information requests from the Department of Justice about hiring practices. Following the DoJ’s decision to look into possible collusion arising from overlapping board seats between Google and Apple, the regulatory review was another sign that Washington’s new trust-busters are taking unusual approaches in their scrutiny of the tech industry.
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Tags: Data Domain, EMC, google, microsoft, Netapp, Yahoo
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techfile 3.06.09

June 3, 2009 6:00 am by morning call

Acer said it would start producing the world’s first mainstream notebook computer using Google’s Android operating system before the end of September. The move opens a new front in Google’s battle with Microsoft by offering an alternative to the Windows operating system on small, low-priced PCs.
Sony has unveiled a new motion-sensing technology for its PlayStation 3 following a trend set by Nintendo’s Wii. The announcement at the E3 video-game trade show came a day after Microsoft demonstrated its Project Natal motion-sensing device for the Xbox 360.
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Tags: Acer, android, Flickr, google, Hotmail, microsoft, Nintendo, PS3, Sony, twitter, Wii, Windows 7, xbox 360, Yahoo
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