services

'The New York Times' drops online subscription service

The New York Times has finally given up on the Web-subscription model, announcing Monday that the newspaper's online site will no longer charge for any content.

The decision comes two years after The Times began charging $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for Internet access to premium content, such as pieces by columnists and archived stories, according to a story that appeared in the paper.

The Times said that the subscription service met targets, acquiring 227,000 paying subscribers and generating $10 million a year.

Executives at the newspaper seemed to suggest in The Times' story … Read more

Open source offers a way to grow the market...even as companies "roll their own" software

Tim O'Reilly has an interesting piece about hedge funds as software companies. His post is a riff on Paul Kedrosky's analysis showing that Renaissance Capital has a higher ratio of software developers on staff than Oracle:

Oracle (56,000 empl.): 1 - 8 (one developer for every eight employees) Renaissance Technologies (178 empl.): 2 -3 (two developers for every three employees) It's not too much of a stretch to say that hedge funds are the new software companies.… Read more

Amazon wooing start-ups to its Web Services

When I think of Amazon, I think of all the money I spend there buying books and CDs. But the company isn't just focused on selling Harry Potter books online to school kids anymore.

Amazon is trying to lure start-ups to sign up for its Amazon Web Services, which offers storage, virtual server, payment and other services on a pay-per-usage basis. This makes sense for young companies that want to focus on their core business and not have to spend money on expensive hardware.

Five years after it launched its first service, the company is making a name for … Read more

Crazy company name alert: Get Satisfaction Unlimited

Sometimes, you can just be too direct.

VentureWire announced today that a company called Get Satisfaction Unlimited, which provides a forum for consumers to discuss customer service issues, has secured $1.3 million in funding from First Round Capital, O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and a group of individual investors.

It's a great idea. But there are probably a lot of names that wouldn't make a 13-year old laugh. Kvetch.com, Alwaysright.com, Whining Old Ladies. If I were a naming consultant, popping off those three would probably net me $50,000. Not bad for 45 seconds of labor. … Read more

"Your call is very important to us..."

No, it's not. If it were I wouldn't still be on hold for 43 minutes. And if I were so important I wouldn't be speaking to a know-nothing idiot from God knows where, who doesn't even understand my question.

Lets face it, customer service can be a cruel joke. And sure, there are exceptions. I was truly impressed with Lexicon's staff; their tech crew was absolutely top notch and I didn't have to punch my way through an automated phone directory hell to get to the right person. Lexicon is a high-end audio manufacturer; … Read more

Amazon dangles seed money for Web services start-ups

Amazon Web Services is launching a program to entice start-up developers with money to build applications that use Amazon's utility computing services. A small company could even get seed money out of the deal.

A subsidiary of online retail giant Amazon.com, Amazon Web Services is a suite of services that let developers access hosted computing, storage, payment and other services and pay for them on a per-usage basis.

Company executives, including CEO Jeff Bezos, have singled out its Web services business as a potential area of future revenue growth and a way to expand into new customers.

Its … Read more

Meebo gets (tiny) file sharing

The divide between Web IM apps and the software versions is getting smaller, albeit with the help of improved bandwidth and technology like Adobe's Flash. In the same vein, Meebo, the popular Web-based multiclient chat platform is getting a handy update tonight. Users are now able to trade files with each other right in the chat window. It's not just Meebo users, either, it's anyone on your friends list. If your buddy has a file-transfer-enabled client, you'll be able to pass files back and forth freely.

However, unlike software IM clients, the caps for file transfer … Read more

Another Blackberry outage

Reports of users being temporarily cut off from BlackBerry service have been popping up on the Web.

BlackBerry users who are also customers of Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon complained of slow e-mail or completely interrupted mobile data service. Corporate customers of Research In Motion did not seem to be affected.

Silicon Alley Insider got this statement from RIM: "Some customers using BlackBerry Internet Service experienced a delay this afternoon in sending or receiving e-mail. The issue has since been resolved and no messages were lost. RIM continues to investigate the matter. Service for BlackBerry Enterprise Server customers was not … Read more

Microsoft preps for business services push

After months talking about the notion of software plus services, Microsoft is apparently ready to get a bit more specific on the business side of things.

Early next month, Business Division President Jeff Raikes is expected to outline what the company has in mind from services for individual workers to small businesses all the way through the largest enterprises.

The "software plus services" term has become nearly ubiquitous in company PowerPoint presentations, but the details are often left unstated. There is a definite effort to add services to almost everything Microsoft does. But while the company has gotten … Read more

HP appoints leader for new Web services, software division

Printing has long been one of Hewlett-Packard's most reliable businesses, but recent moves show the company is trying to adapt to the very mobile and Web-centric world of documents.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-PC maker laid out its new plan to focus on the intersection of printing and the Web at an event last week in New York. After the glut of announcements regarding its new Printing 2.0 campaign, HP said Tuesday it has chosen someone to lead a new unit devoted to this effort.

David Murphy, 45, has been appointed senior vice president of the newly formed … Read more