Shhhh. Engineers sleeping
Care to guess which well-known Silicon Valley start-up now has tents in the basement for engineers who don’t make it home at night? Read more
Google’s “just trust us” is no longer enough
It was Larry Page who penned the famous Founders’ Letter that accompanied Google’s IPO prospectus. In it, he promised that he and Sergey Brin would have the “fortitude” to keep investing for the long term and not “shy away from high-risk, high-reward projects because of short term earnings pressure.”
Mr Page is now CEO – and Wall Street has just had an unpleasant reminder that he really wasn’t kidding. Read more
Research in Motion’s first BlackBerry tablet is the puzzling PlayBook – a device with great potential but missing many key features when it launches on Tuesday.
It has an appealing design, great screen, powerful processor and easy-to-grasp interface, but, unless you have an accompanying BlackBerry smartphone, there is no access to the familiar corporate email, calendar, contacts and messaging services yet. Much more is missing too, as we found out in a review (and video first-look) for the Personal Technology column in Friday’s Business Life section of the FT. Read more
Tech news from around the web:
The buzz around the stratospheric private market valuations of US technology groups such as Facebook, Groupon and Living Social is spreading to Europe, as investors seek to make the most of growth opportunities in internet companies.
Trouble at bricks-and-mortar book retailers has combined with booming sales of e-readers and tablet computers to make e-books the biggest-selling category of the US publishing industry for the first time, according to data released on Thursday.
Sales of e-books in February tripled over the previous year to $90.3m, the Association of American Publishers reported, exceeding adult paperback sales of $81.2m. Read more
The BlackBerry PlayBook puzzle
Research in Motion’s first BlackBerry tablet is the puzzling PlayBook – a device with great potential but missing many key features when it launches on Tuesday. It has an appealing design, great screen, powerful processor and easy-to-grasp interface, but, unless you have an accompanying BlackBerry smartphone, there is no access to the familiar corporate email, calendar, contacts and messaging services. Much more is missing too, as we found out in a review (and video first-look) for the Personal Technology column in Friday’s Business Life section of the FT. Read more
Moore’s Law and order
RAM raiders was the cute term used in the UK in the 90s for thieves that broke into offices to steal D-Ram memory chips inside workers’ computers, as opposed to the original ram-raider jewel thieves who rammed storefronts with their vans to loot the premises. Those 16 megabyte chips, which could be worth $60 each at that time of shortages, are worth nothing now, but multi-gigabyte Nand Flash memory chips may be taking their place as targets for heists. 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.
