To judge how tastes and fashions can change, I placed our four-year-old family laptop, an Acer Aspire, next to the latest version, launched this week, the S3.
Acer had subcontracted the design of our old Aspire to BMW and it had a glossy black exterior curved like a bonnet, while its lid opened and shut with the solidity of a German car door.
Tech news from around the web:
Google is in talks with major record labels to expand its online music service and open an MP3 store that would compete with Apple and Amazon, the New York Times reports. The music store is expected to be linked to Google’s existing cloud service, Music Beta, which lets people back up their songs on remote servers and stream them to mobile phones and other devices. Read more
Zynga says games have staying power
Zynga has updated its IPO filing with a breakdown of the sales contributions from its most popular games – FarmVille, FrontierVille, CityVille, Mafia Wars and Zynga Poker – as it faces questions on whether its games cannibalise one another and on how it will maintain its record of success.
The leading social gaming company also announced it would list on the Nasdaq rather than the New York Stock Exchange, with a ticker symbol of ZNGA, although the timing is still unknown. 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.
