Not another VODdy TV service!?
Amazon has found itself another route to the television and Roku another use for its set-top box under a partnership announced today.
The internet retailer has been exploring ways to widen access to its Video on Demand service beyond the computer and has already made it available through Tivo digital video recorders and Sony Bravia TVs. Read more
Bartz maps out Yahoo’s wall of shame
Carol Bartz, Yahoo’s new chief executive, says she has instituted a “wall of shame” for products that are not making the grade.
Ms Bartz was displaying her usual frankness, in an interview at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco. She said she was looking at whether to fix or sell those parts of Yahoo with which the company was not happy and had been placed on her wall. Read more
Indiscreet Tweets
On Twitter, some tweets are serious leaks. Take the case of Live Search.
Rumours about Microsoft’s rebranding of Live Search, the search engine it hopes will one day rival Google, have swirled in technology circles for months.
Last weekend those rumours seemed confirmed, when LiveSide.net published a screenshot from Twitter that appeared to be from an overenthusiastic Microsoft insider: “Played today with Live search upcoming (to be rebranded) launch pre-beta. I like the new features and UX so far.” (Today the rumours were confirmed by the company.) Read more
Why differentiating Microsoft search will be hard
It has been a consistent refrain from Microsoft execs over the years that internet search can be made much better. Users spend a lot of time fishing randomly through unrelated pages for the information they want (true) and often come away empty-handed (also true).
But trying to beat Google by building a better mousetrap will be incredibly hard. Microsoft is about to start internal trials on a new search service (Kara Swisher has an internal email describing the effort). There are two reasons why this will probably fail to change the competitive position with Google. Read more
Sweet Tweets
One of Twitter’s most powerful attributes is its ability to deliver real-time search. Rather than wait for blogs and web pages to be scraped, archived and inserted into search results, Twitter allows for instant searching of the thousands of brief messages its users generate each day.
Companies have already begun using Twitter to douse PR fires, service customers and promote sales. Now one US candy-maker is using Twitter’s real-time search as a way to show off just how much people are Tweeting about it (and flaunt its social media savvy). 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.
