rumor

Rumor: Facebook to take on iTunes?

AllFacebook blogger Nick O'Neill wrote on Friday that an "extremely reliable anonymous source" had told him that Facebook is working on an in-house rival to Apple's mighty iTunes Store. According to O'Neill, the company is in the process of looking for an executive to head this division--his source allegedly knew about the whole deal because of an acquaintance interviewing for the position--and is already meeting with record labels.

It's unclear whether this would be strictly a music store or whether it might extend to other forms of media, like TV shows and movies.

This … Read more

Google's NY press party: light on the cool news, heavy on the colorful martinis

I learned on Wednesday night that it's fun to play "grill the Google exec." There's also now a little purple lava lamp in my kitchen. You can blame the press cocktail party that Google threw at its New York headquarters at the iconic former Port Authority building in Chelsea.

What you have to understand is that the "Google media party," targeting consumer and lifestyle reporters, had been shrouded in notoriety for the past month. The always classy Page Six section of the New York Post, after all, had described the shindig as "more … Read more

Canon EOS 7D imminent?

Chatter has intensified recently and the rumor mill is chugging along that Canon will soon be introducing a follow up to the EOS 5D called the EOS 7D. The unofficial keeper of UPC barcode data, upcdatabase.com, even has an entry for the Canon EOS 7D that looks very convincing. On the other hand, Canon has said that it won't release any new dSLRs for the rest of this year and stuck to its guns when I asked about this. So, do I think that we'll see an EOS 7D from Canon anytime soon? No. I don't. … Read more

Rumor: AOL to turn Wow.com into 'World of Warcraft' social network

I'm a smidgen skeptical of this rumor, if only because it seems so darn obvious: TechCrunch reported on Tuesday morning that Time Warner's AOL may have found a use for its Wow.com domain, which it acquired in 1998 as part of the offal of what had once been CompuServe.

The source's big scoop? Wow.com has been transferred to the AOL Games division and will become a World of Warcraft social network. If this turns out to be true, expect plenty of level-28 half-elf mages to be typing "Wow.com" into their browsers soon.… Read more

Facebook to get lost (or found) in translation? Signs point to 'oui'

The Financial Times reported on Sunday that Facebook is working to make its rabidly popular social-networking site available in languages other than English. It's been known for quite some time that translation has been on the company's radar as it expands beyond its U.S. roots--executives have mentioned it amorphously in speeches and panels--so there is very little "real news" here other than the fact that the Financial Times story indicates that there may be evidence that this translation project is a major priority.

Nevertheless, Facebook has been unclear about timing, and has not released any … Read more

Report: Microsoft plans to invest in, not acquire, Facebook

This story has been updated with further commentary pertaining to Microsoft's strategic interest in Facebook.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft is in talks to acquire a stake of up to 5 percent of social-networking wunderkind Facebook.

Discussions over such an agreement with the Mark Zuckerberg-founded company are still preliminary, the story by Robert A. Guth, Kevin J. Delaney and Vauhini Vara notes, but if such a deal goes through, the much-hyped Facebook could be valued at up to $10 billion as it heads toward a long-rumored initial public offering. Both companies denied requests to comment to … Read more

Rumor of the day: New slim MacBooks coming soon

Since we can't seem to go more than 10 minutes without some kind of Apple news, it's not surprising that another round of Mac rumors are making their way across the Interwebs this morning.

According to the Web site 9to5mac.com, which correctly called the new iPod Nano design last month, Apple is planning a new line of super slim laptops, with a sleek aluminum design. They offer the following predictions:

Black aluminum and silver aluminum (like MacBook Pros) Considerably slimmer than current MacBook and even the MacBook Pro The screen reaches much closer to the edges than … Read more

Report: Facebook may be headed for data storage

Remember when Facebook was just a way to "poke" that kid who sat in front of you in macroeconomics class? Yeah, that was a long time ago. Rev2 reported on Sunday that technobabble on the Facebook Developer Wiki may be hinting that the "social utility" wants to expand into data storage.

So far, this appears to only apply to developers who have created applications on the Facebook Platform and have until this point provided their own data storage for the apps. A Facebook data storage plan would allow them to rent or purchase storage (or perhaps, … Read more

Comcast may be acquiring BuddyTV.com

Citing ever-shadowy "sources," PaidContent reported Sunday that oft-maligned cable giant Comcast is in the process of acquiring television fandom site BuddyTV.com. No financial details were specified.

PaidContent blogger Joseph Weisenthal speculates that BuddyTV will be integrated in one way or another into Comcast's still-in-beta Fancast site, a Web video and community hub that it launched in August. Comcast, whose Comcast Interactive Media division has been attempting to craft an extensive Web 2.0-savvy social media strategy, also purchased movie ticket site Fandango in April.

BuddyTV representatives allegedly denied the allegation initially and then clammed up; we'… Read more

Google Phone to follow iPhone?

I recently wrote about interesting rumors of a Google browser, and now there are strong rumblings of a Google phone. Of course, just like the browser, this is something that has bubbled to the surface several times over the years, but equally like the browser, the newest rumors seem to have the strongest merit yet.

Tech gadget sites Gizmodo and CrunchGear are reporting that the alleged "Gphone" will be produced in Taiwan and is expected launch sometime in the first quarter of 2008. Alleged functionality -- and this would make total sense -- includes Gmail and calendar functions; … Read more