Yahoo and Alibaba Group have finally reached an agreement for the Silicon Valley Internet giant to sell back half its stake in the Chinese Web company in a $7 billion deal.
At last something's going right for Yahoo.
Google plans to give multiple mobile-device makers early access to new releases of Android and to sell those devices directly to consumers, said people familiar with the matter. That is a shift from Google's previous practice, when it joined with with only one hardware maker at a time to produce "lead devices," before releasing the software to other device makers. Those lead devices were then sold to consumers through wireless carriers or retailers.
I don't see this avoiding fragmentation.
There's also been some chatter that we might be prioritizing our Xfinity TV content on the Xbox. It's really important to us that we make crystal clear that, in contrast to some other providers, we are not prioritizing our transmission of Xfinity TV content to the Xbox (as some have speculated). While DSCP markings can be used to assign traffic different priority levels, that is not their only application — and that is not what they are being used for here.
It's also important to point out that our Xfinity TV content being delivered to the Xbox is the same video subscription that you've already paid for, to your home over our traditional cable network — the difference is that we are now delivering it using IP technology to the Xbox 360, in a similar manner as other IP-based cable service providers. But this is still our traditional cable television service, which is governed by something known as Title VI of the Communications Act, and we provide the service in compliance with applicable FCC rules.
Comcast answers the Xfinity TV and Xbox 360 debate.
General Motors Co. plans to stop advertising on Facebook after the auto maker's executives determined their paid ads had little impact on consumers' car purchases, people familiar with the matter said.
The largest U.S. auto maker by sales will continue to expand its use of marketing through Facebook's pages, in which marketers can display content at no cost, these people said.
The news comes at a bad time for Facebook Inc. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based social network is expected to hold a historic initial public offering on Friday. Company executives have spent the last two weeks trying to convince investors that its advertising business makes it worthy of a $105 billion valuation.
Talk of "Bad Timing"
Hewlett-Packard (HP) has announced it will resume production of consumer tablets but says it will run them on Microsoft's new Windows 8 operating system.
Common sense prevails.
Microsoft is planning to launch a $99 Xbox console package with a monthly subscription as early as next week, according to our sources. The software giant will offer the 4GB console with a Kinect sensor at its range of Microsoft Stores in the US, subsidized with a monthly cost of $15. We're told that the two-year subscription will provide access to the Xbox Live Gold service and possibly some additional streaming content from cable providers or sports package providers. Customers who sign-up for the deal will also be covered under a two-year warranty.
Game changing move. This is what Telco's do, subsidize the device/equipment and then have monthly subscription fees to use the service. In this case the service is XBOX Live Gold which allows you to access a host of services like Netflix, Youtube, Xfinity etc on your XBOX. I am sure Microsoft will roll-in few more services into to make it more attractive (like "Woodstock" music service coming soo to your nearest XBOX). This could also turn very similar to Amazon Prime since it is connected to Microsoft Stores (the retail outlet which sells Microsoft products).
Well, Apple's reign atop the list of the world's top PC makers was short lived. After clawing its way into the lead, if you counted the iPad as a PC, HP is back atop the heap -- even with Cupertino's tablet-inflated numbers. According to Canalys, the Palo Alto company shipped 15.8 million units in the first quarter of 2012, barely sneaking passed Apple by 40,000 computers. Of course, remove Apple's 11.8 million iPads, and it's not even a competition. Lenovo, Acer and Dell rounded out the top five, with the total market shooting up 21 percent over the same time last year. However, there is plenty of reason to believe we won't see client PC fly out the door at such an incredible rate. Amazingly, according to Canalys, tablets accounted for 40 percent of all PC shipments in the US. For more details check out the PR after the break.
Goes to show Tablets are Add-on devices and not replacement for PCs - not yet. It's a PC-plus world and not Post-PC.
The new subsidiary, referred to in this release as Newco, will bring together the digital and College businesses of Barnes & Noble. Microsoft will make a $300 million investment in Newco at a post-money valuation of $1.7 billion in exchange for an approximately 17.6% equity stake. Barnes & Noble will own approximately 82.4% of the new subsidiary, which will have an ongoing relationship with the company’s retail stores. Barnes & Noble has not yet decided on the name of Newco.
One of the first benefits for customers will be a NOOK application for Windows 8, which will extend the reach of Barnes & Noble’s digital bookstore by providing one of the world’s largest digital catalogues of e-Books, magazines and newspapers to hundreds of millions of Windows customers in the U.S. and internationally.
There is more than just a Windows 8 App for Microsoft in this. Let's look at the win's for Microsoft here:
according to a report published last year by McKinsey, there is a problem. "A significant constraint on realizing value from Big Data will be a shortage of talent, particularly of people with deep expertise in statistics and machine learning, and the managers and analysts who know how to operate companies by using insights from Big Data," the report said. "We project a need for 1.5 million additional managers and analysts in the United States who can ask the right questions and consume the results of the analysis of Big Data effectively." What the industry needs is a new type of person: the data scientist.
Big Data = Big Money, but not unless you have the Big Talent.
We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup app when his last name is used as the search term (which happens to be quite often now).
...
Cute, huh?
By Deepak Sharma
