Nook comes of age with colour
You can play Scrabble on Amazon’s Kindle now, but the double-word squares are still a shade of grey rather than pink.
Colour is coming next year to E Ink devices, but you can enjoy it now with the NookColor, the new LCD-based eReader from Barnes & Noble, reviewed in this week’s Personal Technology column in the FT’s Business Life section. Read more
Betfair is California scheming
Betfair, the UK-based online betting exchange that went public last month and reached a valuation of more than $2bn, is looking to the US and California in particular for future growth.
David Yu, chief executive, who grew up in the Bay Area, returned to San Francisco this week for the Web 2.0 Summit, where I spoke to him on the sidelines about Betfair‘s US plans. Edited highlights after the jump: Read more
Near Field Communication not so far off
Near Field Communication, approved as a standard seven years ago, has gone viral just this past week.
Google’s CEO led off his interview at the Web 2.0 Summit with a demonstration, Research in Motion said BlackBerrys would have it and AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon announced the ISIS joint venture to develop a national NFC network in the US.
But what is it and why the sudden attention? Read more
Black Ops pops in shops, game drops stop
Gamers worldwide spent $650m on Call of Duty:Black Ops in its first five days on sale last week, according to the latest figures from its publisher Activision Blizzard.
The new record – $100m more for an entertainment launch than its predecessor Modern Warfare 2 a year ago – was the second bit of good news this week for video game publishers. Read more
When Taiwan relaxed restrictions on its technology companies investing in mainland China, it was an explicit attempt to help the island’s two biggest chipmakers – TSMC and UMC.
But the government seems not to have informed regulators from the Financial Supervisory Commission or the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Nine months after the liberalising measure was passed, UMC’s plan to become the first Taiwanese chipmaker to buy a Chinese counterpart has hit regulatory blocks in Taipei. Read more
Yuri Milner is very popular among internet entrepreneurs. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, encourages him to drop by and Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga, an online games company, regards him as a trusted adviser. Among Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists, feelings are decidedly cooler.
Continue reading “From Russia with love and money” Read more
OnLive’s cloud gaming makes TV connection
OnLive, the ground-breaking cloud gaming service, has landed in the living room with the release of its first hardware.
A “MicroConsole” set-top box with a wireless game controller is available for pre-order in the US immediately, with delivery from December 2, in a $99 package that includes any OnLive online game. Read more
FCC chair faults Google-VZ neutrality deal
Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski said on Wednesday that a controversial agreement on net neutrality principles between Google and Verizon this August hurt his efforts to forge a broader consensus.
“I would have preferred if they hadn’t done exactly what they did when they did,” Mr Genachowski said, adding that it “slowed down” his attempt to get web companies and carriers to agree to a policy outline that presumably would have given stronger protection to internet traffic.
The FCC chief’s remarks came during an onstage interview at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Read more
Murdoch: still taking the tablets
The spirit of Project Alesia, News Corp’s iPad news aggregator, is alive and well, according to James Murdoch.
The London-based venture was reportedly put “on hold” last month, after it failed to attract other newspapers to the platform, who were not falling over themselves to be aggregated by News Corp.
But speaking at the Morgan Stanley TMT conference in Barcelona on Wednesday, Mr Murdoch – chief executive of News Corp Europe and Asia – said that bundles were still very much part of his digital vision, on the iPad and beyond. Read more
Get on the social bus, urges Facebook chief
In one of his most accomplished and assured public interviews, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, predicted a social revolution over the next five years.
“Almost every major product vertical’s going to get rethought to be social. Get on the bus!” he told the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. 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.
Older entries