Corporate and legal

Bomb-making tips, hit list behind Blogetery closure

More details are surfacing about why Blogetery.com, a blogging platform that claimed to service more than 70,000 blogs, was mysteriously booted from the Internet by its Web-hosting company.

The site was shut down after FBI agents informed executives of Burst.net, Blogetery's Web host, late on July 9 that links to al-Qaeda materials were found on Blogetery's servers, Joe Marr, chief technology officer for Burst.net, told CNET. Sources close to the investigation say that included in those materials were the names of American citizens targeted for assassination by al-Qaeda. Messages from Osama bin Laden and … Read more

Handset world: Don't speak for us, Steve Jobs

It may be true that no cell phone is perfect, but the handset world isn't taking too kindly to Apple CEO Steve Jobs' public assertion that other smartphones suffer from the same antenna and signal problems that have been widely reported regarding the iPhone 4. And, in what's turned into an ugly back-and-forth PR mud fight, Apple is firing back by making its internal signal test results public to insist that it's not just pulling rivals' flaws out of thin air.

Hui-Meng Cheng, chief financial officer at HTC, told The Wall Street Journal on Monday that "… Read more

Mystery shrouds closures of blog, forum platforms

Note: For more recent news on this issue, read "Bomb-making tips, hit list behind Blogetery closure"

Two services that enable users to blog or create online forums have disappeared from the Internet under mysterious circumstances.

Blogetery.com, a blogging platform, went dark on July 9, less than a week before Ipbfree.com, a service that helped users create Web message boards, went offline. No one has said these situations are linked, but they nonetheless possess intriguing similarities.

• Each of the services host loads of user-generated content. • Operators at both Blogetery and Ipbfree said they were shut … Read more

Why Web host shut down 73,000 blogs a mystery

Note: For more recent news on this issue, read "Web host to return Blogetery's blogs."

Blogetery.com, a little-known WordPress platform used by more than 70,000 blogs, was shut down by its Web hosting company more than a week ago and nobody seems willing to say why or who is responsible.

BurstNet, the Web-hosting company, informed Blogetery's operator that service was terminated at the request of some law enforcement agency but wouldn't say which one. As for the reason, BurstNet hasn't made that clear either. In an e-mail to Blogetery's operator, BurstNet … Read more

Google buys Metaweb and its sprawling database

Google on Friday announced that it acquired Metaweb, a company founded in 2005 that has assembled a database of all sorts of things in the world, their properties, and their relationships.

Metaweb has some affinities with Google--facing the challenge that, for example, people can use dozens of different terms to describe the same entity or that the same name can refer to different entities. Metaweb's database, open to contributions by others through a mechanism called Freebase, keeps track of the properties of 12 million such entities.

Google can handle a lot of search queries, but Metaweb's information will … Read more

Gizmodo works with DA in lost iPhone 4 probe

Jason Chen, the Gizmodo editor whose computer equipment was seized in April as part of an investigation into a missing prototype iPhone 4, has voluntarily agreed to turn over information to authorities.

The agreement between Chen and the San Mateo County District Attorney's office, which calls for the DA to drop attempts to search Chen's property, puts an end to the dispute over whether the search of Chen's computer gear was lawful. The settlement also provides the DA's office with the information it sought from Chen, said Chief Dep. District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe in an interview … Read more

Report: Apple, Google showed interest in Palm

The bidding for Palm earlier this year apparently attracted interest from some prominent Silicon Valley companies, including some that were reportedly mostly interested in keeping the intellectual property out of the hands of their foes.

Hewlett-Packard ultimately turned in the winning bid, agreeing in April to pay $1.2 billion for the PDA pioneer. However, before that was announced, five prominent Silicon Valley companies kicked the tires on the company, including Apple, Google, and Research in Motion, according to a Business Insider report that cites sources familiar with the negotiations.

Interest in Palm's vast library of intellectual property and … Read more

AMD beats expectations for second quarter

Advanced Micro Devices reported better-than-expected second-quarter results as demand for notebooks helped the chipmaker beat estimates.

On Thursday, AMD reported a net loss of $43 million, or 6 cents a share, on revenue of $1.65 billion, up from $1.18 billion a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were $83 million, or 11 cents a share. Wall Street was expecting AMD to report earnings of 6 cents a share on revenue of $1.54 billion.

Like Intel, AMD's much larger rival, the company said that it was benefiting from increased demand for PCs. Both Intel and research firms such as … Read more

Google's earnings lighter than expected

Updated throughout at 3:22 p.m. PDT following Google's earnings conference call.

Google's second-quarter revenue was up 24 percent compared to last year, but the company missed analysts' targets for earnings.

Excluding traffic-acquisition costs, Google took in $5.1 billion during the quarter, which ended June 30. That compares to around $4 billion during last year's second quarter, leaving out the money Google pays to its partners for traffic. Analysts polled by Yahoo Finance were expecting $4.99 billion in revenue for the quarter.

But reaction to earnings announcements tends to focus on the negative, and … Read more