Spore creatures could challenge copyright holders
John Lasseter, chief creative officer at Pixar and Disney, loves playing with the Spore Creature Creator according to Maxis, Pixar’s Bay Area neighbour.
But should he show alarm at what is being invented and uploaded online by others or welcome in a whole new generation of animators? Read more
Intel’s Portuguese play with Classmate PC
Intel has made its biggest deal yet for its Classmate PC – the low-cost notebook that has competed with One Laptop per Child and nComputing in bringing affordable computing to the classroom.
It is providing 500,000 Classmate PCs to the Portuguese government for its primary school population, with units already arriving in time for the new school year. Read more
‘Cloud computing’ is fast becoming this year’s ‘green data centre,’ if the recent excitement about technologies that allow people to perform increasingly complicated computing tasks over the internet is any guide.
Compared with some other recent announcements, however, the cloud computing project announced on Tuesday by Yahoo, Intel and Hewlett-Packard appears to pack a particular punch. Read more
Ribbit’s smart switch to BT
Ribbit, which introduced itself only last December as Silicon Valley’s first phone company, has been bought by one of the world’s oldest phone companies for $105m.
BT, the UK operator which began as a telegraphic service in 1868, aims to use Ribbit as a platform for services on the national Internet-Protocol 21st century network it has been building, called 21CN. Read more
Silicon Roundabout: Is this the heart of the UK’s new dotcom boom?
Move over Silicon Valley. New York’s Silicon Alley is a Web 1.0 relic. And Cambridge’s Silicon Fen is just SO pre-crunch. Now Silicon Roundabout is staking its claim as the new tech start-up hub of the moment. Read more
Cuil has Google aims but own ideas
Despite its Irish roots and Google links, new search engine Cuil cannot say it is feeling lucky today.
Cuil has been down for much of its launch day, presumably from the weight of traffic – a victim of the media hype (including our own story) and perhaps its own hubris. Read more
Euro tech luminaries lined up for Seedcamp
A who’s who of European technology entrepreneurs will be providing guidance and mentoring to a new generation of start-ups at this year’s Seedcamp. Founded by Saul Klein of Index Ventures and run by Reshma Sohoni, formerly of 3i and Softbank Capital, Seedcamp aims to build and support a community of European tech entrepreneurs, culminating in its main event in London this September.
The best-known entrepreneurs on this year’s advisor list are Niklas Zennstrom, founder of Skype, the internet telephony service, and more recently Joost, a web video provider; and Brent Hoberman of travel site Lastminute.com and, latterly, Mydeco, an online furniture retailer. Read more
Yahoo moves offline with Zimbra
Zimbra Desktop is a web application disguised as a desktop one, or maybe it’s the other way around. I admit to being confused.
I have been playing with it since Yahoo announced the beta of the product on Thursday and it has some impressive features that could persuade some users they don’t need Microsoft’s Outlook anymore. Read more
Icahn keeps some wiggle room
Fans of the very public form of corporate theatre practised by Carl Icahn will be disappointed to hear that the garrulous corporate raider has agreed to a gag order as part of his settlement with Yahoo (the condition is revealed in an agreement filed with the SEC late on Monday.) Pity.
Yahoo also used a standstill agreement to tie his hands in other ways, for instance forbidding him to “support, assist or facilitate” any future acquisition attempts by others. Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is fascinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Robin Kwong is the FT's technology, media and telecoms page editor in London. Formerly he was the Taipei correspondent and wrote about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
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