Amid the recession and layoffs, there are some glimpses of employment hope and opportunities to help you make informed decisions on what technology to spend money.
Sony Electronics and Comcast announced Sunday that they have partnered to open a unique retail experience in Philadelphia. The store is named Sony Style Comcast Labs and will serve as a place where consumers can learn about emerging technologies and experience new digital devices.
The co-branded retail store and technology lab, which opened to the public March 16, showcases the latest innovative products and services from both companies and previews future Comcast technology, products, and services.
A Sony Style retail store
(Credit: Gizdomo)Examples of future technologies that Comcast unveiled to Philadelphia consumers for the first time include "The Future of High-Speed Internet" and "The Future of Home Phone Service."
The former offers the experience of Internet surfing and downloading at 100Mbps, about 20 times faster than regular existing cable connection. To put this in perspective, at this speed you can use up Comcast's 250GB ration in about 40 hours.
The latter, on the other hand, shows of what you can do with the future enhanced cordless telephones. Obviously, they can do a lot more than just place calls; they also handle e-mails, IM, text messaging, and access to Yellow Pages.
As for Sony, the new Sony Style Comcast Labs feature the best of Sony's electronics. Sony's current showcase includes Bravia HD LCD televisions, Vaio PCs, dSLR and Cyber-shot digital cameras, Handycam camcorders, and PSP and PlayStation 3 game consoles. Emerging technologies such as organic light-emitting diode TVs are also shown.
Comcast will also showcase all of its products and services from voice to video and Internet, and it will demonstrate how they work together seamlessly for the consumer.
The Sony Style Comcast Labs is located at the base of the Comcast Center in Philadelphia.
This has to be the weirdest and saddest crime-of-virtual-passion story I've come across.
Kimberly Jernigan--a 33-year-old woman from North Carolina--was apparently distraught after her online relationship with a 52-year-old man from Claymont, Del., came to an end.
The pair apparently met through the online community Second Life and began a virtual relationship. The two finally met in reality several months ago, and the alleged victim ended the relationship, sending Jernigan into a downward spiral.
Kimberly Jernigan met her virtual ex-boyfriend in Second Life.
(Credit: CBS3.com)In early August, Jernigan allegedly drove to the victim's Pennsylvania workplace and attempted to kidnap him at gunpoint, according to local news station CBS3.com. When she was unsuccessful, according to the report, she returned two weeks later to track down the victim's Delaware address, and posed as a postal worker to do so. After four days of searching, authorities said she found residence in the Whitney Presidential Towers on the 7100 block of Society Drive in Claymont.
On August 21, police said, Jernigan broke into the unnamed victim's apartment with a Taser, a pair of handcuffs, a BB gun, her dog, and a roll of duct tape. He wasn't there, so she waited. When the virtual ex arrived home he saw what looked like a laser beam projecting on his chest. He immediately fled the apartment and contacted the Newcastle County Police.
... Read more
Ixia kicked off its "Switch to Ixia campain" by offering trade-in equipment and competitive financing solutions.
(Credit: Ixia)Ixia, a leading company in IP performance testing, announced a competitive upgrade program today as part of its "Switch to Ixia" campaign.
The program will last through the end of September 2008. During this time, new and existing customers from all over the world can trade equipment from Ixia's competitors, including Spirent, Agilent, and Shenick, in for Ixia's latest test equipment and applications. Or they can earn up to a 50 percent credit toward a new purchase.
Ixia also offers IxFinancing Leasing, a special financing solution that allows you to pay for Ixia products, software, and services over time with no down-payment. You'll make small monthly payments, and a $1 end-of-lease buy-out.
Ixia has been known for many IP-based network testing solutions, from Aptixia IxLoad, which can generate layer 4-7 traffic for content-aware device assessment, to ixChariot, which CNET uses to test wireless routers.
Prices for ads on news and gaming Web sites dropped from May to June, but they rose for entertainment.
(Credit: Pubmatic)Online advertising prices remained roughly flat in June compared with April and May, but some categories of sites fared better than others, according to data released Tuesday.
Overall, the cost of online ads, as measured by effective cost-per-thousand impressions, dipped a bit from 38 cents in April to 37 cents in May to 36 cents in June, said Pubmatic, which sells technology designed to help advertisers fine-tune online ad campaigns. The company measures ad prices through its network of more than 4,000 customers that place ads on various Web sites, largely in the United States.
Of the five categories Pubmatic monitors, games and news fared worse than average. News plunged from $1.10 in May to 48 cents in June, and games dropped from $1 to 80 cents. The entertainment category, though, rose from 29 cents to 40 cents. The lowest-price category, social networks, dropped from 32 cents to 27 cents.
For large Web sites--those with more than 100 million page views per month--ad prices increased from 21 cents in May to 23 cents in June. Medium sites, with traffic between 1 million and 100 million page views, rose from 33 cents to 46 cents, and small sites dropped from $1.13 to 81 cents.
Despite a hectic past two months fighting off a proxy battle with investor Carl Icahn, Yahoo is rumored to be sending out buyout feelers for social-networks company Demand Media.
Yahoo's Hilary Schneider, who was recently promoted to oversee the company's U.S. go-to market operations, traveled to Demand Media's Santa Monica, Calif., offices a couple weeks ago to gauge Demand's interest in a $1.5 billion to $2 billion buyout, TechCrunch reports, citing unnamed sources.
But Demand Media didn't bite, TechCrunch notes, adding that company founder Richard Rosenblatt is said to be seeking a price in the $3 billion range.
A post in All Things Digital casts a different perspective on that meeting.
In an interview with All Things Digital, the Demand Media founder said: "There is a lot of potential here, and I want to build a big company for the long-term."
All Things Digital also cites Yahoo sources as saying there has been "no offer floated" to acquire Demand Media.
But both reports note that a hook-up between the companies wouldn't be a bad idea.
Says TechCrunch:
It just so happens that what Demand Media is good at--generating lots of advertising impressions and creating niche social networks for media sites, may be a perfect fit for at least some of what ails Yahoo.
But should Yahoo want to make a play for the company and force a deal, Demand Media doesn't have the same pressures as Yahoo, which is in its own fix with Icahn. Demand Media isn't publicly traded, at least yet...
The largest bank in the United States has officially ignored the second most popular Web browser--until recently.
A tipster for Networkworld.com pointed out recently that Bank of America's Web site did not list the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox as a "supported browser," even though Firefox now commands almost 20 percent of the browser market. The bank's site lists Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Apple's Safari, and Netscape as acceptable browsers.
Netscape? Even AOL, Netscape's former owner, doesn't support Netscape Navigator anymore.
Of course, Firefox, which was released in 2004 and recently set a Guiness record for downloads in a 24-hour period, still works on the BofA Web site--just not officially. The issue apparently came up when a BofA customer contacted the bank about problems he was having accessing the site using Safari. "Please don't tell me to just use Firefox instead," the Networkworld.com reader told BofA customer support.
Not a problem, according to customer support.
"Please note Bank of America does not support Firefox," was customer service's reply.
When posed with the question of why the No.1 bank's Web site did not whole-heartedly embrace the No. 2 browser's 180 million users, a spokeswoman told Networkworld.com that "there is a process that we go through to 'officially support' a browser type and version, which includes in-depth functional and regression testing cycles.
"As the usage of Firefox browsers has increased with our customer base, we will be initiating a full support model for Firefox version 2.x in the very near future," spokeswoman Tara Burke told Networkworld.com.
Think "the very near future" will prove to be very soon? Don't bank on it.
Tuesday brought a mixed bag of Microsoft news. On the Daily Debrief, I sit down with CNET News senior writer Ina Fried to discuss the good, the bad, and the downright embarrassing.
Let's start with the good. The company announced the pricing of the new, pay-as-you-go business apps for the Web. The whole suite of business tools, which includes a variety of office communication tools, will run you $15 a month. Individually, the apps will go for $3 a pop. Ina suspects these tools will be very handy for professionals on the go or for companies who choose not to employ IT support.
The bad and embarrassing news is all wrapped into one. On Tuesday, the company launched the Vista Compatibility Center. Yes, you read that right. We're still talking about Vista, the operating system that Microsoft released 18 months ago. The need for the Center speaks volumes about consumers' slow adoption of the OS. Ina makes the point that if this were Apple, the company would have already moved on to a new cat. Oh, and to add insult to injury, the online Center was down and unavailable for most of the morning.
Intel and DreamWorks Animation on Tuesday announced a strategic alliance designed to power up the movie studio's 3D authoring tools.
Faced with increasing demand for 3D animated feature films, DreamWorks will receive access to Intel's latest and future high-performance chips, including those with multiple processing cores. Intel's software engineers will also work with DreamWorks to tweak the studio's applications to run on an Intel-based computing infrastructure.
"Technology plays a significant role in enabling our artists to tell great stories. By utilizing Intel's industry-leading computing products, we will create a new and innovative way for moviegoers to experience our films in 3D," Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks' chief executive, said in a statement.
One of the first projects from the alliance will be DreamWorks' upcoming Monsters vs. Aliens film, which is scheduled for release March 27.
That film is part of DreamWorks' effort to produce only stereoscopic 3D feature films beginning next year.
Google's Orkut social network isn't just big in Brazil. It's also popular in India, especially among software developers, according to a new survey.
Despite Facebook's efforts to promote that social network as the platform of choice for third-party application developers, Orkut is used by twice as many software programmers in India than either Facebook or MySpace, according to an Evans Data survey of more than 300 developers in India. Software programmers in that country are heavy users of social networks in general.
Seventy-three percent of those surveyed said they had used Orkut, compared with 35 percent for Facebook and 32 percent for MySpace.
"Capturing mindshare with developers in fast-growing emerging development markets like India and Brazil gives them (Google) a strategic advantage going forward in further cultivating this very important community," Evans Data Chief Executive John Andrews said in a statement.
Google has released new domains specific to India and Brazil as a result of the popularity in those countries.
The independent survey was conducted in late May and early June.
Despite winning an important legal victory against Google last week, Viacom's public image is taking a beating.
Ever since Viacom, parent company of MTV and Paramount Pictures, filed a $1 billion copyright suit against Google's YouTube last year, Google has won kudos for championing the rights of Internet users. On the other side, Viacom was blasted by critics who accused it of trying to lock down information and block people from enjoying South Park and The Daily Show.
Neither of these two perceptions is entirely accurate. But what is true is that there is little Viacom--or any other big media firm trying to enforce its copyright online--can do to avoid being saddled with the image of a corporate bully. Companies considering whether to follow Viacom's lead should carefully weigh the risks of potentially alienating consumers.
Last week, Viacom was widely criticized on the Web after a judge ordered Google to turn over information that included YouTube usernames, Internet Protocol addresses and the viewing histories of YouTube's users. Viacom representatives denied that the company had ever requested any personally identifiable information.
By then, the damage was done. Viacom was branded an enemy of the Internet and of privacy. This kind of public relations drubbing shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
Advantage: Google
Look at what Viacom is up against. Many Internet users have simply come to think of free Internet content as their right. Any attempt to restrict access is perceived as an attack on Web freedom. Google, which has a long history of facing down copyright owners, including book publishers, newspapers, and Hollywood studios, has earned respect from those who see content owners as money grubbers and many copyright laws as anti-consumer.
Google is also savvy when it comes to public-relations scuffles, say critics. Not all of Viacom's image problems are self inflicted, says Louis Solomon, an attorney representing a group of copyright holders who have sued YouTube for copyright infringement and are working with Viacom.
"I think there is little doubt that Google has been trying to be effective in its use of the press," Solomon said. "How else do you explain why they have been collecting and using IP addresses to monetize their site (for a while now), yet only now, with great self righteousness, claim to be concerned about producing IP addresses?"
Responding to Solomon's assertion, Ricardo Reyes, a Google spokesman, said Viacom's ailing public image can be traced to another Google advantage.
"The law is on our side," he said.
A judge will be the one to determine that. What is more certain is that Google has been more willing than Viacom to debate the case in public.
Last year, Google CEO Eric Schmidt made news several times by suggesting that Viacom was overly litigious. At a conference in April, Schmidt said this about Viacom: "You're either doing business with them or being sued by them."
At a retreat for media and tech CEOs, Schmidt claimed Viacom was a company "built on lawsuits."
And this week, Viacom's supporters, such as Solomon, accused Google of helping to whip up controversy over the privacy issue.
Google-Viacom deal in the offing?
On Monday evening, sources close to the discussions between Google and Viacom said they were close to reaching an agreement which would allow YouTube to redact IP addresses and usernames.
Did the bad PR affect Viacom's decision? A company's public image certainly can impact business.
Companies dueling it out in court often hire public relations firms to take their case to the masses. They may sense that their opponent is sensitive to negative press. A well-designed PR strategy can hurt the other guy's bottom line, and possibly bring on a settlement.
One way Viacom could instantly improve relations with Internet users is to simply drop the lawsuit, according to Erick Hachenburg, the CEO of Metacafe, a video-sharing rival of YouTube's.
Hachenburg argues that content companies have to decide between one of two ways to handle copyright issues on the Web.
He said the first way is the one chosen by Hulu, the video portal created by News Corp. and NBC Universal. Hulu allows users share videos and the company has syndicated content across the Web (Viacom has traditionally preferred to host its own content but has recently been boosting the number of syndication deals).
The alternative to the Hulu-esque strategy is to follow in the footsteps of the Recording Industry Association of America and solve problems with lawsuits.
"I hope Viacom doesn't use the (YouTube user) information to sue consumers," Hachenburg said. "Clearly there is an underlying question: how much do you want to adapt your strategy to live in Web. 2.0? Hulu is embracing Web 2.0 ideas, and I think they are finding success."
