All posts tagged ‘Voices’
by John Markoff, Reporter, New York Times
For Apple, these are the best of times and the worst of times. The company is on a tear like never before. It’s winning market share from Microsoft, enough to persuade the software giant to embark on a costly ad campaign that’s being described as a belated response to Apple’s Vista-baiting Get-a-Mac ads. Apple stock has outpaced Google’s, and in the space of a year the iPhone has turned the telecommunications industry in a knot trying to find a way to respond. But there have also been dramatic stumbles.
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by Bradford Plumer, Assistant Editor, The New Republic
As the age of cheap oil comes to a close, it’s springtime for gloomy futurists. Visions of a brutish world marked by violent squabbles over dwindling reserves, of junkyards littered with abandoned cars, of suburban slums overrun by weeds, of the collapse of industrial agriculture–none of this sounds as outlandish as it once did. Still, most of these horror stories are likely overstated: Energy experts tend to agree that, with a little ingenuity and a generous helping of political will, we could transition away from fossil fuels without being forced to give up our modern lifestyles.
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by Joshua Bearman, Contributing Writer, Harpers
The first time I see Billy Mitchell he is holding court among the games, greeting admirers, signing autographs, and distributing bumper stickers that celebrate his greatest achievement: WORLD’S FIRST PERFECT PACMAN. This is the summer of 2003, and we are at the Sixth Annual Classic Gaming Expo, held in the slightly run-down conference facilities of the Plaza Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Billy is impossible to miss.
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by Alana Semuels, Staff Writer, LA Times
It must be tough to be a delegate at the Democratic National Convention –- you have to know when to scream for Hillary, when to scream for Obama and when not to scream at all. And then you have to learn the art of shaking hands and networking while listening for really important announcements such as someone somewhere is offering free pizza. Life may be easier if you have a swanky cellphone. At least, that’s what a bunch of companies are trying to convince you as they push their mobile-related products in Denver.
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by Dan Kois, Staff Writer, New York Magazine
Aaron Sorkin, a man whose discomfort with the Internet goes way, way back to the days he got angry at the Television Without Pity message boards, is writing a movie about the founding of Facebook. Sorkin has created a Facebook group for “Aaron Sorkin & the Facebook Movie” on which Sorkin (or is it his assistant?) (or is it someone pretending to be his assistant?) writes: “I’ve just agreed to write a movie for Sony and producer Scott Rudin about how Facebook was invented.”
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by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's
Oracle (ORCL) this afternoon named Jeff Epstein as its new CFO. Safra Catz gives up the CFO title, but remains president. Epstein will report to Catz.
Since May 2007, Epstein had been CFO of Oberon Media, an Internet game provider and publisher funded by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Oak Investment Partners and Lehman Brothers. Epstein previously worked at DoubleClick, King World and ADVO, according to Oracle. Epstein is on the board at Priceline (PCLN) and MDC Partners (MDCA). Epstein, 52 years old, has an M.B.A. from Stanford and a B.A. from Yale.
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by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's
Seagate (STX) this afternoon said it is shifting its stock exchange listing to Nasdaq, where the cool kids hang out, from the New York Stock Exchange, while maintaining its current stock symbol. In a statement, CEO Bill Watkins said the move ensures that investors “have access to fast, high-quality trades in a more cost-effective structure for Seagate.”
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by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's
Cisco Systems (CSCO) today announced a deal to acquire privately held PostPath, a Mountain View, Calif.-based provider of Linux-based email and calendaring software, for $215 million. Cisco said the deal will extend the email and calendar functions of its Webex Connect collaboration platform. Cisco said that PostPath’s software is “interoperable with many other email solutions and provides a browser-independent AJAX Web client.”
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by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's
Sify Technologies (SIFY) shares are sharply higher this morning after the company announced a deal with Google (GOOG) to offer the Google Apps suite of communications and collaboration tools, including email, chat and online documents, to Internet users in India. Google Apps will now “power” Sify’s mail and chat applications.
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by Olga Kharif, Senior Reporter, BusinessWeek
Scott Goldman uses his mobile phone to call friends and business contacts all over the world, from Britain to Australia. But the Southern California-based consultant doesn’t pay a dime in international tolls to his mobile-phone carrier, AT&T, the biggest in the U.S. Instead, Goldman places the international portion of the calls–roughly 100 minutes a month–through a service called Gorilla Mobile that relies on Internet-based technology to route wireless calls virtually toll-free. Goldman, a user of Apple’s iPhone, estimates that he saves hundreds of dollars a year with Gorilla’s service. He stands to cut wireless bills even more by signing up for another, iCall, that’s due for the iPhone in the coming weeks
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by Jeanne Cavelos, Author, The Science of Star Wars
… It seems the lasers we have today would be capable of doing many of the things we see in Star Wars. We could injure or kill people; we could burn structures or melt holes in walls; we could destroy targeted areas of spaceships, assuming we could keep a beam on them for long enough. The main difference between Star Wars lasers and ours is the size. While we can create lasers that emit extremely powerful energies, we need to pump great energies into them to make them work. That energy source takes space, which the Death Star, at least, provides.
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by M.G. Siegler, Blogger, VentureBeat
The micro-messaging service Twitter Tuesday suspended the accounts of users don_draper and peggyolson. If those names sound familiar, you’re probably a fan of the hit AMC show “Mad Men.” Those two Twitter users take their names from two of the main characters on the show, and over the past several weeks had been providing updates, mostly in character from what I could tell.
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by Richard T. Kaplar, Vice President, The Media Institute
Imagine that someone came up with an idea to solve the “problem” of information overload (a.k.a. “too much information”) by levying a tax on the technologies that have sparked our information explosion. Making it too expensive for many people to blog or otherwise send and receive information through digital and Internet-based technologies would not only reduce a lot of superfluous, self-indulgent electronic clutter, but would reverse the fragmentation of opinion threatening our democracy, the theory would go. Well, someone has come up with just such a scheme.
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by Mark Cuban, Blogger, Blog Maverick
If you haven’t read, ESPN has said that they will be aggressively bidding for the retransmission rights for the 2016 Olympics. Notice that I didn’t say TV rights. The battle for the Olympics rights will be in spreadsheet projections done by ESPN, NBC and probably DirecTV that will take into account what revenues can be generated by TV advertising (traditional and interactive), cable/satellite subscription revenues, an ever-increasing market size for mobile video and advertising, and of course audio/video and text advertising of all types.
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