If you follow AllThingsD, and Weekend Update hopes you do, then one thing you’ve come to value is the special way the staff gets around the world to cover the important stuff and report it straight from the geek’s mouth. This week our bicoastal brigade brought the tech news as it happened, and in Boomtown’s case, from 30,000 feet.
Reporting a second-quarter loss that widened thanks to a weak videogame market, Electronic Arts today said it will cut 1,500 jobs by early next year as part of a restructuring effort aimed at trimming at least $100 million in costs. This after announcing plans this morning to acquire social network game maker Playfish for $400 million.
Electronic Arts is betting big on social gaming. This morning, the videogame publisher said it will acquire social network games maker Playfish for $400 million. An interesting move given that the company’s leadership dismissed rumors of such a deal just last month.
On the heels of its deal to incorporate Twitter data into its search results, Google on Monday announced an experimental Labs feature that searches the social Web. Called Google Social Search, the service is intended to make search results more relevant by enhancing them with personalized social data.
How nonexclusive is Microsoft’s deal with Twitter? So nonexclusive that just hours after Microsoft announced it, rival Google lurched forward to say that it has entered into a similar partnership with the microblogging service.
The search giant may be second to this party, but it’s not going to be late.
But make no mistake–this is very clearly a rush job. Microsoft has code running. Google does not.
The Cliq, Motorola’s first phone based on Google’s Android operating system, is headed to market and will arrive there Nov. 2. Sales to existing customers will begin Oct. 19 and open to the general public Nov. 4. T-Mobile USA has priced the handset at $199 with a two-year contract, which seems a bit dear considering you can get a 16GB iPhone 3GS for the same price.
Geekfighting may never become its own UFC event, but following tech news this week seemed, in places, like a view to a big, well-funded cage match.
Silicon Valley luminary and Golden Geek cover model Marc Andreessen is adding another gig to his CV: Hewlett-Packard director. Andreessen, who sold his software company, Opsware, to HP two years ago for $1.6 billion, will begin serving on the board immediately, bringing its total number of directors to 11.
In August 2008, Facebook claimed 100 million monthly active users worldwide. By April 2009, the social networking outfit doubled that number. In July, it reached 250 million monthly active users. And now, two months later, Facebook has passed 300 million. But more important: Facebook is cash-flow positive.
While the highlight 
of the week was undoubtedly Apple’s Rock and Roll event on Wednesday featuring Steve Jobs 2.0, that was only the anodized aluminum, candy-colored, video-shooting cherry on top of another week of tech sector reporting from All Things Digital.
Motorola is getting a bit of long lost love from Wall Street today, now that it has unveiled the CLIQ–the Android-powered handset with which it hopes to regain market share in the intensely competitive cellphone business. Shares in the company spiked more than seven percent after the CLIQ announcement Thursday, and today they’re up well over six percent.
When Steve Jobs described the iPhone at D5 as “the best iPod we’ve ever made,” he set the bar high for future iterations of the iconic device. Now, in the run-up to tomorrow’s invitation-only Apple event, the question is: Will Apple reach the bar? And with what? The answer, if the latest rumors prove true, depends on your feelings about iPods with cameras.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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