david

If Jerry Yang does lose his job as the result of a deal between Yahoo and Microsoft, the Stanford connection may prove its worth.

"Jerry is very talented and if he wants to work at Google we'd be very excited to have him, but I don't think that's going to happen," the BBC quoted Google co-founder (and fellow Stanford alum) Sergey Brin. He was responding to a question whether Google would ever consider employing Yang if Yahoo's chief executive lost his job.

Brin is huddling this week with the other two-thirds of Google's … Read more

The noise you may hear in the background is one Antonio Stradivari spinning in his 18th century grave.

We honestly don't have anything against the boombox's comeback, but the monstrosity pictured here looks like a DIY version of something from a CSI autopsy table. This Frankensteinian project is the work of artist David Ellis, who created it with "medium-modified double bass fiddle, spraypaint, casters, oak, plywood, metal, iPod, two tube pre-amps, B and C mids and tweeters, Electro-voice woofers, JVC tweeters, Crown XLS 602 Poweramp, and Behringer equalizer."

Perhaps most impressive is that he created three … Read more

David Treadwell is the special guest on the Gillmor Gang this week (check out the podcast of the show here). He is the corporate vice president of Microsoft's Live Platform Services, which includes the recently introduced Live Mesh. Treadwell works directly for Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, who has been working to put the Web, rather than the PC, at the center of Microsoft's computing universe.

Live Mesh is trying to solve a key user problem--how to mesh the desktop, mobile, and the Web for consumers and developers. For example, Live Mesh can provide core underlying infrastructure for … Read more

David Byrne appeared with Paul Simon recently at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and according to a report in the NY Daily News, the former Talking Head announced that a new Byrne/Eno album is in the making. "Brian had written a lot of music," Byrne is quoted as saying, "but needed some words, which I know how to do. What's it sound like? Electronic gospel. That's all I'm saying." … Read more

Google's announcement of its App Engine has naturally generated a lot of buzz, as well as some fear, uncertainty, and doubt. There is the concern that Google will corral even more user data via its App Engine, becoming a kind of 21st century data and advertising baron, as Microsoft has been the operating system and productivity software baron in the last three decades.

If you extrapolate from Google's growing share of search and advertising, and include a growing share of Web applications through its APIs and the fledgling App Engine, you could imagine a Google that becomes the … Read more

David Yen, executive vice president of Sun Microelectronics (Sun's chip group), is leaving the company after 20 years to go to Juniper Networks.

Mike Splain, who has been at Sun for two decades as well, has been appointed as acting head of the organization.

Yen has been one of Sun's most visible executives for several years and was seen as a rising star in the new era under CEO Jonathan Schwartz. The departure, despite what some analysts might say, is somewhat of a surprise.

The departure will also likely once again raise the question, "Why does Sun … Read more

The iPhone commercial parody on YouTube with genius filmmaker David Lynch hit the mark for me. His insight about people watching movies on iPhones, I'm paraphrasing--"You think you've seen the movie after watching it on your iPhone, but you'll be cheated. You haven't seen the movie."--could also be applied to music.

Just because you were listening to music while text messaging your boy/girlfriend doesn't mean you've actually heard the music. Exposure to music, art, film, what have you, is not the same as active engagement. It's kind of … Read more

Steve Guttenberg joins us, although not the police academy one, the better audiophiliac one. Monster cables suck, David Lynch is cool, Jeremy Piven is a sellout on the cover of "Heeb," all on today's episode of The 404.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

The first wave of applications built on Google's OpenSocial APIs is set for liftoff in the next few weeks as MySpace, Orkut, and Hi5 make the final push to release their software.

I spoke with David Glazer, director of engineering at Google, at the Graphing Social Patterns conference, who told me that it's "pizza time" for the developers, meaning they are putting in long hours to deliver the apps sooner than later.

The OpenSocial APIs allow developers to create apps that access a social network's friends and update feeds without modification for compliant platforms. The … Read more