production

Document-sharing service Scribd has pulled in $9 million in a Series B funding round, the company announced Friday. The round was led by Charles River Ventures with participation from existing investors Redpoint Ventures and Kinsey Hills Group.

With the new cash, Scribd plans to speed up its product development and hire new employees.

And the first of those hires was announced in conjunction with the funding announcement: George Consagra, who most recently served as chief operating officer of AOL's Bebo, has been hired as president. (Co-founder Trip Adler has the CEO post.)

Scribd's monthly user count is now … Read more

An ultimate mobile productivity application, Pageonce's personal assistant gives you the tools to view all your online accounts in one sophisticated application. Sure, you'll have to be comfortable storing all your passwords on your phone, but if you are, you'll find yourself relying on Pageonce's stylish interface to get all your details in a glance.

After adding accounts through an assisted browsing process, Pageonce will display them as buttons on the Accounts tab. Tap it to view, for instance, your banking transactions and total balance, travel itineraries, social commitments, and friends' status updates on a slew … Read more

Why have a separate printer, scanner, copier, and fax machine when you can get all of those devices in one machine? The multifunction printer is the next evolution of desktop companions that can do everything but say "you're welcome."

A solid all-in-one printer gives you the functionality of each part without sacrificing individual quality, and most of them actually seamlessly integrate with your work environment thanks to front-loading media card readers, built in 802.11 b/g print servers, and easy-to-use driver software. Take a look at a list of our favorite AIOs and decide for yourself, … Read more

Tom and Rafe name their favorite technology of 2008 and pass along some faves of the listeners as well.

Listen now: Download today's podcast… Read more

It's probably not enough of a selling point to make buyers out of the operating system's critics, but Microsoft will start selling boxed copies of Windows Vista in a Product Red edition.

Starting later this month, customers will be able to purchase Windows Vista Ultimate in a version that offers some proceeds to Product Red, a charity that works to fight AIDS in Africa.

The Windows version is not entirely new, having been sold on several models of Dell PCs since early this year. In addition to providing some cash to the AIDS charity, the Red version of … Read more

SanDisk is evaluating a production halt over the holidays at its manufacturing facilities in Japan, reflecting an overall slowdown in the flash memory chip industry.

"The joint venture is evaluating plans for operations over the holiday season, including a possible stoppage of some production lines," a SanDisk spokesman said Friday. "We constantly consider manufacturing schedules in light of market requirements and this is particularly true during the holiday season," he added.

Milpitas, Calif.-based SanDisk and Toshiba have joint production lines for NAND flash chip manufacturing in Japan.

This follows a Bloomberg report that said Toshiba … Read more

If you've got several Gmail accounts and are frequently having to juggle signatures for each of them, worth downloading is Blank Canvas' Gmail Signatures. This experimental Firefox extension will drop in one of four custom HTML signatures based on whichever account you're sending the message from. If you're like me and have two or more accounts, setting this up is a big time saver.

Once installed, you get a new drop-down menu that lets you select one of your four custom signatures. These can be managed directly within Gmail, and come with an editor that shows you … Read more

You know it's going to be really bad when the man who first revealed that the world is flat, Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, says it's going to be really bad.

Here's how bad it is: Russians are drinking less vodka.

So, as you gird your loans and tighten your money belts, perhaps it's time to live a simpler life. One that revolves far less around luxurious and complex technologies.

Here are five tech products that you will surely be able to live without in this recession/depression/secession from Alaska.

1. Twitter. … Read more

TextFlow, a new way to collaboratively edit documents, is opening up to everyone Monday morning. Instead of going the real-time route like Zoho and Google Docs, the service opts to let a master editor corral multiple versions of the same Microsoft Word document inside of one file.

Each editor sends in a copy of the file (presumably via e-mail), and the master editor drags and drops all of them into a single bucket. The application then divides the edits into sections, letting the master editor pick whichever revisions make the most sense. When finished, he or she can convert it … Read more