iPhone wishlist item one: To-do lists

After a little over two weeks with my fancy new iPhone (yes, I was one of those nerds who braved the opening day hordes to have one on June 29 — it took me all of an hour to get my Jesus phone), I’ve started to compile a list of the things I think the […]

Monday the 16th for Google

Monday the 16th seems like a good day to reflect on Google’s Friday the 13th purchase of DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash. People are already calling this tie-up a nightmare for Microsoft (rumored to be the jilted suitor for DoubleClick’s affections). Is the story really that gory for Microsoft (and, for that matter, Yahoo!, […]

Apple’s fallen, but it’ll probably get up

Just after the good news that Apple’s sold nine digits of iPod (I’m still guessing that they crossed that mark in April, as I predicted here), the company comes out with the bad news that they’re slipping the next version of Mac OS X, 10.5, better known as Leopard. According to the New York Times,
Apple […]

The inbox of the Empire’s worst engineer

Clearly Joey and I are busy enough that we’re having a hard time with the care and feeding of the Nerdy. Why don’t we start light, and open with a joke this Friday night?
Hey, kid. That trash compactor you designed is up and running and I’ve got to say it looks great. Lots of grime, […]

Big money for tech bigwigs

Not strictly an “everyday technology” post, but a link in today’s Wall Street Journal caught my eye. It’s a table of total compensation figures for a number of Fortune 500-type bigwigs. Mostly CEOs, but the odd chairman’s in there too, I think. Have you ever wondered how the high-and-mighty of the technology world compare, pay-wise, […]

Microsoft to bulk up ad business with DoubleClick?

The Wall Street Journal has Microsoft buying out Silicon Alley digital advertising stalwart DoubleClick:
The New York-based company is using investment bank Morgan Stanley to help sound out its options, these people said, including a possible stock-market listing. The company is majority-owned by San Francisco private-equity firm Hellman & Friedman, which since purchasing DoubleClick in 2005 […]

Big Content 1, Cablevision 0, Apple ?

New York cable operator Cablevision has been trying to roll out network DVR service to their customers for the last year:
In a move that could ignite a major debate about consumer “fair use” of TV programming, Cablevision Systems will unveil plans to test a service that gives cable subscribers the ability to record and time-shift […]

Quick, send in the clowns*

Don’t bother, they’re here:
News Corp. and NBC Universal said today that they were creating an online video site stocked with TV shows and movies, plus clips that users can modify and share with friends.
The two companies enlisted help from some of Google’s biggest Internet rivals. The News Corp.-NBC Universal partnership has deals with Yahoo Inc., […]

Another digital ad network, this time from Nokia

Nokia’s getting into the digital advertising game, announcing an ad network targeting mobile users.
Nokia today announced two mobile advertising services. Nokia Ad Service, is a fully managed service for advertisers to conduct targeted advertising on mobile services and applications. Nokia Ad Service consists of a group of mobile publishers forming a mobile ad network […]

Microsoft shyster harshes on Google book search

I understand Microsoft’s in pitched battle on a number of fronts with Google, but I’m a little surprised to see Microsoft use copyright law as a way to differentiate themselves from the search engine giant.
Thomas C. Rubin, Microsoft’s Associate General Counsel for Copyright, Trademark and Trade Secrets, recently gave a speech to the Association of […]

I see dead presidents

Family-social-network-cum-genealogy-site Geni has gone from $0-$100MM (in valuation) in eight months (I’m sure the “seven weeks” in Mike’s TechCrunch post quoted below is a typo).
Seven week old Geni raised a $10 million second round of financing last week, led by Charles River Ventures (see our coverage of CRV here), with a post-money valuation of […]

Free Barenaked Ladies on the internet? Won’t somebody please think of the children?

The good news: a major band has released their latest album, in its entirety, as DRM-free MP3 files.
The bad news? It’s the Barenaked Ladies.
I kid because I love. And also because, as a Canadian of a certain age, I was practically force-fed BNL from their earliest days, whoring their self-produced tape release on MuchMusic (the nation’s music […]

100,000,000 iPods, and counting

I just recently got around to listening to Tim Cook, Apple’s COO, speak at the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium (a “symposium?” Faaaancy). A lot of people made note of his comment that Apple’s sold 90 million iPods like it was news. In fact, Apple first posted that number when discussing their most recent quarterly […]

People: the same, and different

When Apple Inc. wanted to bring its series of “Mac vs. PC” ads to international markets, it faced a difficult issue: What’s funny in one culture can seem ill-mannered in another.

Here’s the shorter version of the WSJ article on how Apple’s adapted their “I’m a Mac…” ads for other countries:
People in Britain and Japan […]

Outlook 2007 sinking Office?

I (briefly) installed a trial of Office 2007 on my work box, to get a glimpse of the future (since it appears that my business unit is in upgrade Siberia, it’ll be years before we see IT put it on our machines). While the wisdom of completely changing Office’s UI to the new “ribbon” device […]

Can Microsoft build a "web platform?"

In additon to fending off challenges to Office from Google, a lot of people (myself included) think that Microsoft’s facing a challenge to their platform dominance from the internet. If you buy the World of Ends-style idea that “the internet is a platform that nobody owns,” that’s a pretty big, amorphous blob for the guys in Redmond to wrestle.
A lot […]

GAYD gone; Google Apps takes on Microsoft Office

The Google Apps for Your Domain (GAYD) brand may be no more, but its successor, Google Apps, has taken on a much higher profile today: Google’s announced the for-pay Google Apps Premium targeted at large organizations.
The premium package bundles:

Gmail (10GB storage, ad-free, with BlackBerry support)
Google Calendar
Google Talk
Google Start Page
Google Pages Creator
Google Docs & Spreadsheets

For $50 […]

Joost, Viacom, Apple, and grid delivery

I’m a little late in highlighting something Steve “Micro Persuasion” Rubel posted in his blog last week while he ruminated on Robert Cringley’s suggestion that Apple should embed BitTorrent support into the Apple TV box. 
However, Cringley raises a heckuva an idea that somebody, most likely not Apple, will pursue. A tandem of services are coming together that will leverage the […]

AOL screen name owners now have OpenIDs, too

Things are getting hot around OpenID. First Microsoft announces that CardSpace will “interoperate” with OpenID (I only airquote because the commitment is pretty vague right now, but it seems like goodness), and now AOL has given all their screen name users an OpenID URI.
Every AOL/AIM user now has at least one OpenID URI, http://openid.aol.com/<sn>.
Where […]

The latest "iPod killer:" mobile subscription music services

Robin Bloor seems pretty convinced that Omnifone’s MusicStation service and software for mobile devices has got Apple’s number in the digital music market.
He relies on two main arguments to make his case. First, Omnifone’s software is flexible enough to work on hundreds of millions of existing handsets. Given that the company is striking deals with […]