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.
Got a set-top box fetish and a few billion dollars to blow on it? Then boy, does Motorola have a deal for you. “People familiar with the matter” tell The Wall Street Journal that the company is seeking a buyer for its home and networks mobility division, which makes set-top boxes and other kit for the cable and telecom industry.
BoomTown’s week began onstage in front of thousands of chanting women. No, Kara wasn’t filling in for Oprah; she was doing something much cooler.
Four years after separating its PC business from its imaging and printing group, Hewlett-Packard is planning to merge them, undoing one of Mark Hurd’s first big moves as CEO. “People familiar with the situation” tell The Wall Street Journal that the plan under consideration would combine HP’s printer and PC businesses under Todd Bradley, who currently oversees only the latter.
Earlier this year, Christine Varney, the new antitrust chief at the Department of Justice, said she planned to return the DOJ to a policy that led to landmark antitrust suits like the one against Microsoft in the ’90s. And she delivered on that promise in short order. Since her confirmation in late April, the DOJ has seen a sort of Trustbuster renaissance. It has begun inquiring into potentially anticompetitive recruiting practices in Silicon Valley. It’s opened an investigation into the Google Books settlement. And now it’s scrutinizing cellphone exclusivity deals, like the lucrative one between Apple and AT&T.
The consumer electronics wizards at Dell who brought us the now defunct DJ Ditty MP3 player and the Axim handheld are hard at work on another gadget, a mobile Internet device.
The Department of Justice’s inquiry into Google’s proposed book-search settlement continues on apace with various publishers today claiming to have received civil investigative demands from the agency’s antitrust division. These are simple requests for information and indicative of little more than the DOJ’s concern that the settlement might impair competition in the market for digital books. That said, that the DOJ even has such concerns is problematic for Google.
If China wants to correct the “false impression” that it fears the Internet, ending its repressive and paranoid blocking of Web services would be a good place to start. This morning Beijing extended the Great Firewall of China, restricting Internet access to Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail and Bing, among others.
With a 20 percent share of the the world-wide browser market and 31 percent of its European segment, Mozilla’s Firefox browser has clearly proven that Microsoft Internet Explorer is not immune to free-market competition. But the natural course of the free markets is apparently not moving fast enough for the European Commission, which is mulling forcing Microsoft to include browsers other than IE in its Windows OS.
How badly does Sun want its acquisition deal with IBM to go through? So badly that it’s willing to lower its purchase price for assurances that Big Blue will finish the deal.
Qwest just became interesting again. Shares of the smallest of the Baby Bells are on the upswing this morning following reports that it is considering selling its long-haul voice and data network. Sources familiar with the matter say Qwest is in the early stages of seeking a buyer for the unit, which could be valued at about $2 billion to $3 billion.
“We will not simply ride out the storm. Rather, we will take a long-term view, and go on offense.” That was the promise IBM CEO Sam Palmisano made in his annual letter to shareholders this week detailing Big Blue’s plans to forge new markets in infrastructure services. Here we are just a few days later and the company has already set about fulfilling it. IBM announced a new water-management services effort today, one that will see it bringing its information technology acumen to bear on the systems used to monitor reservoirs, water pipes and the like.
So those reports that the Beatles’ Apple Corps was in talks with Rock Band developers MTV Networks and Harmonix over the creation of a Beatles-themed videogame? True.
According to a Beatles pun-riddled joint press release from Apple Corps Ltd., MTV and Harmonix this morning (what, no “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey”?), the companies have inked an exclusive agreement to develop what they exuberantly describe as “an unprecedented, experiential progression through and celebration of the music and artistry of The Beatles.”
On July 11, Apple released the iPhone 3G, and with it, iPhone software v. 2.0. It also launched the App Store. The software upgrade runs on first-generation iPhones as well, enabling all iPhone users to download and use over 1800 programs in the store, ranging from Encyclopedia Britannica to Chimps Ahoy!
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.
While the technology behind the Telephone is new, the design is reassuringly old-fashioned, reminiscent of a phrenologist’s horn or ear-candle in form. We found the experience far more comfortable than the one we had with the Telegraph.
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
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