Google cleans house
A quiet Friday afternoon at the end of summer is the perfect time to kill off a batch of under-performing internet services: with any luck, most users won’t even notice.
Late last Friday, Facebook dispatched its daily deals service and Google shut down most of the applications it acquired with Slide. Now Google is at it again, throwing ten more failed experiments onto the junk heap of internet history. Read more
Digital photography has slashed the cost per image for amateurs like the Taylor family. Not only can we afford to take more pictures, but we can weed out the duds and be far more selective in deciding which images to share online or print out.
But there is one tricky bit – getting the images off the camera’s digital memory card is not always easy, as my wife discovered last week after our youngest daughter’s wedding. Most digital cameras come with a USB or cable so users can download images to a PC. But the Taylor family is surely not alone in never being able to lay our hands on the right cable when we need it. Apparently, it is my fault for having too much technology at home.
Tech news from around the web:
Michael Arrington, the man behind the influential TechCrunch blog, has started a venture capital fund to invest in start-ups, the New York Times reports. Mr Arrington’s $20m CrunchFund throws up concerns over a conflict of interests, the NYT adds, saying that it is one of journalism’s cardinal rules that reporters should maintain a distance from the people, organisations and issues they cover. Read more
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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.
