CTO

I remember when Paul Mascarenas was named CTO of Ford. It was January 2011, and literally days later he made his way to the CNET stage for a chat at the Consumer Electronics Show. About 18 months later, the company opened its new Silicon Valley Lab to try and emulate the pace of innovation found in the electronics industry. These were very real indications that Mascarenas and Ford would place more than lip service on being in the midst of consumer electronics, and not just in the car business.

Mascarenas is part of CEO Alan Mulally's reinvention of Ford … Read more

DALLAS--A top Verizon executive urged regulators here Thursday to get out of the way so that wireless operators can more easily buy and sell wireless spectrum on the secondary market.

During a speech today at the Telecommunications Industry Association trade show, Verizon Chief Technology Officer Tony Melone said that the Federal Communications Commission should make it easier for companies to buy and sell wireless spectrum licenses that they've bought in government auctions.

His sentiments echoed comments made by AT&T's CEO Randall Stephenson who spoke at the conference here on yesterday.

Melone said the FCC needs to … Read more

U.S. chief technology officer Aneesh Chopra is leaving his post at the White House.

Chopra, who was sworn in on May 22, 2009, works closely with U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra. Prior to taking his position in the Obama administration, Chopra was Virginia's Secretary of Technology. In the White House, according to his official bio, his job included "fostering new ideas and encouraging government-wide coordination to help the country meet its goals from job creation, to reducing health care costs, to protecting the homeland."

News of his impending departure was first reported by Fedscoop. (… Read more

Raymie Stata has stepped down as Yahoo's chief technology officer but will remain at the company as an entrepreneur in residence.

Ash Munshi will replace Stata, Yahoo announced today, confirming an AllThingsD report.

"Raymie Stata, CTO, has taken on a newly created role of EIR at Yahoo to allow him to return to his entrepreneurial roots," the company said in a statement. "Yahoo is excited to appoint Ash Munshi to the role of CTO. Ash has a well-established career managing successful global technology organizations at the most senior levels with a laser focus on meeting and … Read more

Our guest on this morning's episode of The 404 Podcast is Ron Gorodetzky, CTO of Fflick.com, a new site that uses Twitter to aggregate public opinion on popular movies. We're anxious to talk to Ron about the new site, but first Wilson grills him about his former position as Systems Engineering Manager at Digg.

Ron is certainly not a newcomer to the world of start-up Web sites. Back in 2004, he was asked by Kevin Rose to be part of a small social news site you might have heard floating around the Internet: Digg. After helping build Digg into the ubiquitous powerhouse it is now, Ron left and joined up with three other former Digg employees to found Fflick.com, a new online tool that uses Twitter to show you instant movie reviews from your online social circle.

Here's how Fflick works: the first step is to log into your Twitter account on the Fflick home page that also shows all the newest movies in theaters and opening soon, and a small percentage rating that represents the public's general sentiment about the film.

If you see a particular title of interest, you can click through to see public tweets and even filter through your friends' posts as well as positive tweets, negative tweets, interesting tweets, and the latest tweets. There's also a convenient menu on top that routes you to information on show times, ticket purchasing, Netflix queuing, and more.

Ron tells us about the team of engineers who work in the background to ensure the site stays populated with opinions, including the learning machine that scans for keywords to help Fflick recognize a title within a tweet and quality it for the site. Not to worry though, as much as it sounds like Skynet, Ron assures us we're safe...for now.

Ron also gives us a quick preview of the long-term road map for Fflick, and while the site focuses only on movie reviews for now, the engine behind Fflick can theoretically be used for scanning the public sentiment for a variety of issues, including political opinions, music reviews, and more. There are lots of exciting things in the works for a company that's been around for less than two months, so start Fflicking and be sure to tell your friends you heard about it on The 404 first!

According to sources close to the situation, AOL has hired Alex Gounares (pictured here) as its chief technology officer.

Gounare's departure was announced internally at Microsoft today, where he is corporate vice president of Advertising Research and Development and CTO for the software giant's Online Services division.

According to his bio at Microsoft, Gounares "was the corporate vice president for Corporate Strategy, where he was responsible for helping set the overall strategic direction for the company. Before that, Gounares spent three years as the technology assistant to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, and he also was responsible for … Read more

Devil Mountain Software has a bit of a credibility problem, according to a ZDNet investigation that revealed, among other things, that its chief technology officer is actually an alias created by a tech blogger.

Larry Dignan, ZDNet's editor in chief, revealed the ruse Sunday in a report headlined "Why we don't trust Devil Mountain Software (and neither should you)." Among his organization's findings were that the small software company's CTO, Craig Barth, was actually a longtime InfoWorld columnist named Randall C. Kennedy.

ZDNet, which is a sister publication of CNET, said it had intended … Read more

Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra drops by to chat with us about the technology policies of the current U.S. administration. We ask him our own questions as well as some from the audience. Get Chopra's takes on Broadband, health care, Net neutrality, education, and more.

The following is a rundown of the topics covered in this comprehensive interview and the questions asked by the hosts as well as some questions submitted by fans of Buzz Out Loud. Thanks for your participation, … Read more

Macs infected with a new pirate-induced botnet are launching denial-of-service attacks! Do you have your zombie botnet preparedness kit? Also free mobile DTV in DC, an official Windows Mobile 6.5 release date, and Oracle buys Sun.

Oracle buys Sun http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/technology/companies/21sun.html

Obama appoints Aneesh Chopra as CTO http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/04/18/tech-industry-cheers-as-obama-taps-aneesh-chopra-for-cto/ http://www.technology.virginia.gov/OfficeInfo/chopraBio.cfm http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/04/aneesh-chopra-as-chief-technology.html

UN World Library goes public http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/20/AR2009042001324.html?wprss=rss_technology… Read more