Business Tech

Confessions of a man who does the layoffs

Editor's note: This is part of a series of stories about the recession's effect on the tech industry.

Over the last few months, there have been countless stories of cutbacks at companies large and small. Real people are losing jobs. For some, that means losing their homes or being forced to change careers. In this series, CNET News is telling the stories of many of the people on the receiving end of the hits recently sustained by the tech industry.

But there is another side to layoffs that doesn't get told very often. That's the story … Read more

IPOs a thing of the past?

HALF MOON BAY, Calif.--When bonds are paying yields like stocks and blue-chip companies are severely undervalued, who wants to invest in equities, let alone an IPO?

Those are just some of the challenges companies face in attracting investors in this current economic climate, noted panelists Tuesday during the AlwaysOn Venture Summit West conference here.

Despite the dire economic climate and the market meltdown, the panelists noted "good companies" will still have an opportunity to go public--it just may take longer.

Investors, such as mutual funds, asset managers, pension funds and hedge funds, are holding a significant amount … Read more

IBM to start-up: Industry vet responds to recession

Editors note: This is the first in a series of stories about the recession's effect on the tech industry.

Patricia Sueltz has had her share of blunt bosses.

At IBM, Sueltz was CEO Lou Gerstner's technical assistant during Big Blue's dramatic turnaround in the 1990s. After that, she ran the services division at Sun Microsystems for CEO Scott McNealy during the dot-com bust from which many believe Sun has never truly recovered.

But not even the acerbic McNealy could have cooked up what 56-year-old Sueltz saw in front of her two months ago: A PowerPoint slide of … Read more

Intel, Hitachi to develop solid-state drives

Intel will target solid-state drives for server computers in a tie up with Hitachi that was announced Monday night.

Intel and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) said they will "jointly develop and deliver" Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Fibre Channel (FC) solid-state drives (SSDs) for servers, workstations, and storage systems.

While Hitachi is a large supplier of hard disk drives, Intel manufactures and sells consumer and enterprise-class solid-state drives (and the flash memory chips inside the drives). The enterprise-class X25-E Extreme SSDs that Intel offers now are based on Serial ATA (SATA) technology. As are its consumer-class … Read more

Report: AMD Phenom II chips echo Intel's i7

940 versus 940. That may be the confusing Intel-AMD processor model-number juxtaposing that consumers can look forward to next year.

A Chinese Web site has posted details of Advanced Micro Devices' upcoming Phenom II desktop processors, of which at least two are due to be launched at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.

The post on HKEPC lists more than a dozen new models due to be launched during the next eight months. AMD is now moving its chips to 45-nanometer process technology from an older 65-nanometer process. Generally, smaller geometries result in faster and more power-efficient processors.

Processors listed … Read more

Markets tumble on recession news

Shares of Dell and Qualcomm plunged by double digits Monday, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average went into a free-fall of nearly 700 points on news that the economy is officially in a recession.

The Dow closed down 679.95 points, or 7.7 percent, to end the day at 8,149.09, breaking a five-day run at posting gains.

Meanwhile, the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell further, declining 8.95 percent, or 137.50 points, to end at 1,398.07. And the CNET Tech Index dropped 7 percent to 1,014.20.

Despite reports that retailers fared better than expected … Read more

Amazon's database service enters public testing

SimpleDB, one of Amazon.com's suite of online services that people can use to build Web sites or other computing operations, is out of private beta testing.

The service lets programmers store database records at Amazon and extract specific data from them. Along with the shift to public beta testing, Amazon cut the price for storing data from $1.50 to 25 cents per gigabyte per month.

SimpleDB, introduced nearly a year ago, is a newer arrival into the Amazon Web Services suite. Other services let customers process data, store raw data, distribute content, and store messages sent among … Read more

After Black Friday, retailers eye Cyber Monday

Black Friday wasn't as disastrous as many feared (except, of course, for the poor Wal-Mart employee trampled to death by impatient shoppers).

As far as sales go, overall, the retail industry did get a slight boost. The National Retail Federation counted 172 million shoppers visiting Web sites and brick-and-mortar stores between Thanksgiving and the following Sunday, which is up from 147 million last year. In total, the NRF expects holiday sales to rise 2.2 percent this year to $470.4 billion.

But it's tough to say whether today, known as Cyber Monday, will prove as promising for … Read more

Google reveals Chrome extensions plan

Google has published its plan to build into Chrome what is arguably its most requested feature: the ability to accept extensions that can customize how the open-source Web browser operates.

And guess what? Google's dependence on advertising notwithstanding, one of the extension examples the company points to is the ability to block advertisements.

The Chrome extensions document, spotlighted Saturday by Google programmer Aaron Boodman, doesn't include a timeline, but it does shed light on why the project is a priority for Chromium, the open-source project behind Chrome.

"Chromium can't be everything to all people," according … Read more