Three years after squeezing a settlement out of Microsoft for alleged infringements of its controversial patent on embedded Web applications, Eolas Technologies hopes to do the same to a bunch of other big tech outfits. This morning, the research and development company filed suit against nearly two dozen companies, including Amazon, Apple, Adobe and Google.
With IBM quietly contributing another 2,800 or so employees to the next Bureau of Labor Statistics Unemployment report, this seems like a fine time to pay respects to those who’ve gone before them. And there are many. In the past six months, thousands of workers have been right-sized and offboarded. Rebalanced and rationalized. “Smartsized.” Sacked. A quick scan of the carnage.
Globally, we spend about 25 times more time watching TV than using a computer. Little wonder, then, that companies like Intel have been striving for years to make the PC the fulcrum of the digital living room or at the very least, to make it look like a TV. But the idea of a living room PC just never quite caught on. Seems TV viewers–shocker!–like the TV viewing experience and don’t much want to see it compromised by a browser, keyboard and whatnot.
Next month’s Macworld Conference & Expo show floor will be quite a bit easier to navigate than in years past. With registration down by 20 percent over last year, there are likely to be far fewer attendees, and with a growing list of companies pulling out of the show, there’ll be fewer booths for them to crowd. Earlier this week, Adobe said it had decided against exhibiting on the show floor. A coterie of other companies is joining it, top among them, Belkin, which has also pulled out of exhibiting at CES. What’s next–a Super Bowl boycott?
Oh, they’re all piling on now. This week has brought with it bad news from Palm, Research In Motion, Adobe, AT&T, and Nokia. Now AMD has joined them as well. In a terse statement issued this morning, the company warned that its fourth-quarter revenue will come in significantly lower than previously expected, thanks to souring computer sales.
Well, no wonder Adobe won’t have an exhibition booth at Macworld Conference & Expo 2009–the company seems to be sacking employees who might have otherwise staffed it.… Citing the standard litany of economic tribulations, Adobe Wednesday reduced its fourth-quarter outlook and said it will cut 600 jobs around the world–about eight percent of its workforce.
With $25 billion in cash and short-term securities stored away on its balance sheet, Apple is in a uniquely comfortable position from which to weather the econaclypse. And perhaps a uniquely opportunistic one, as well. According to CEO Steve Jobs, anyway. To wit: Jobs’s comments Tuesday about Apple’s cash reserves what it might do with them.
Flash content on the Web may be slow-loading and occasionally nonintuitive, but at least now it’s searchable. Adobe has conceived of a way for search engines to index Flash content, even pre-existing Flash content, without the need for developer intervention.
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.
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.
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.
Spectacular in the bellowing Russian sailor sense of the word …
“If you spell something wrong on your insurance claim, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so …”
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