Microsoft has launched a broad new effort, known as Microsoft BizSpark, to help entrepreneurs and startups get off the ground using Microsoft tools and technology. The BizSpark effort, announced Nov. 5, is a global program to do just what the name suggests—help spark new companies to enter the business world. Dan'l Lewin, corporate vice president…
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Google Ends It’s Advertising Deal with Yahoo!
In a move that’s not terribly surprising, Google announced via blog post today that it is scrapping its search advertising deal with Yahoo. Google’s decision puts Yahoo’s search business back in play and may bring Microsoft back into the picture. In separate statements, and the Department of Justice responded. The DOJ noted that it would…
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Firefox Reaches 20% Marketshare for the First Time Ever
The good folks at Mozilla are trumpeting a new report by global analytics service Net Applications that documented a 20% global market share for two out of four weeks in October. It's a new high bar of popularity for the 2nd most popular browser in the world. Firefox is safe, standards compliant, extensible...and not made…
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New Senior Vice President of Devices Hardware Engineering at Apple
According to today's Apple website, Mark Papermaster is joining the Apple company as senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering, reporting to Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Papermaster, who comes to Apple from IBM, will lead Apple’s iPod® and iPhone™ hardware engineering teams. Papermaster has 25 years of product and technology experience, and was previously a…
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Political Sites Scale Up for Election Night Traffic — GO VOTE
News sites and political blogs are expecting extraordinary traffic tonight as Americans track results of the Presidential election, and are scaling their infrastructure to meet the challenge. The extraordinary interest in the U.S. Presidential election is likely to translate into enormous web traffic tonight, and news sites and political blogs have had months to prepare.…
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Windows Media Player 12’s surprising new features
Though many previously bundled applets now will ship separately to Windows 7, Windows Media Player remains part of the core OS. Windows 7 will ship with Windows Media Player 12, which includes some surprising new features. The UI itself is brighter and lighter than WMP11. Some buttons and toolbar items have been moved around, but…
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The New AOL.com Gets Social
Thursday AOL announced that social networks are front and center in the latest redesign of their homepage AOL.com. The company announced it will start to gradually roll out the new homepage to users over the next few weeks (unless they choose to opt in earlier). A widget (or module, or whatever you want to call it) on the new…
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HD Netflix streaming comes to Xbox 360 first
It's something you can't get on the Roku. Nor on LG's BD300. Nor on Samsung's P2500 / P2550 Blu-ray players. Nor through Netflix's own "Watch Instantly" portal. It's high-def Netflix streaming, and it's coming first to Microsoft's Xbox 360. Yes friends, when the all new dashboard hits on November 19th, with it will come HD…
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The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne Works Toward a More Personal Freakout
Twenty-five years ago, The Flaming Lips burst out of Oklahoma City with deafening noise and ambition to spare. Today, it is one of rock's most perplexing and productive bands in history. Front man Wayne Coyne (at right, with the broken cross) and multi-instrumentalist Michael Ivins (at left, in the shades) may not have foreseen the…
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RAID 5 to stop working in 2009?
Increasing storage and probability of hard disk failure will crash into eachother in a year or so. Apparently, RAID 6 isn't far behind. Disk drive capacities double every 18-24 months. We have 1 TB drives now, and in 2009 we'll have 2 TB drives. With a 7-drive RAID 5 disk failure, you'll have 6 remaining 2 TB drives.…
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