GigaOM
Tracking the Internet Evolution
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Why the Wii Could Win the World (but Probably Wont)
Last month I had the chance to chat with a top U.S. Nintendo exec and suggest how, with a few savvy improvements to the Wii system, the company could turn it into the living room Net appliance of choice. But despite the opportunity Nintendo has with the Wii, the company seems determined to let it re ...
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Another Day Another Yahoo Rumor
The Sunday Times of UK reports (more like speculates) that Microsoft is going to buy Yahoos search business for $20 billion in a very complex transaction. The Sunday Times claims that Jonathan Miller formerly chief executive of AOL, and Ross Levinsohn, a former president of Fox Interactive Media are ...
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Is It Time to Buy Google Shares?
Eric Schmidt is fond of saying it would take Google 300 years to achieve its goals. I always thought he must have been at least partly joking. The shelf life of Internet companies is short; its taken Yahoo and eBay little more than a decade to reach what appears to be their respective best-if-used-b ...
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Why the Lori Drew Decision Was a Bad One
Few online events have ended as horrifically as the Lori Drew case. Befriended by a boy on MySpace who later began bullying her, a teenager named Megan Meier hung herself, and her online friend later turned out to be the mother of a school classmate, who created the persona specifically to torment t ...
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What If the Recession Does Turn Into a Depression?
Its far from certain its even a fairly remote possibility but the possibility of an economic depression is being discussed more and more these days. As is to be expected, the discussion tends to be centered around how much of what were used to having could be destroyed. As worthwhile as it is t ...
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The iPhone and the Ensuing Wireless Broadband Boom
I have been saying for some time that the launch of the 3G iPhone was going to jump-start the demand for wireless broadband. The subsequent release of additional web-friendly mobile phones (we like to call them superphones ) the Samsung Instinct, the BlackBerry Bold, the Google Phone, and Sony Eric ...
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Another VoIP Startup in Trouble
Regardless of however you spin it, if you are firing 20 percent of your work force and have no real business model to speak of, you are in trouble. That certainly is true of Fring, an Israeli Mobile VoIP startup, which has cut 10 of its 50 employees. CEO Avi Shechter told TechCrunch that his company ...
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Is Yahoo Stock a Bargain?
Carl Icahn, a hedge fund investor and corporate rabble-rouser, has bought 7 million shares of Yahoo for $67 million. That works out to about $9.92 a share. With that, his stake in Yahoo is now 75.6 million shares, or nearly 5.5 percent of the company, according to the AP. So how should we read into ...
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With Twitter, a Desperate Need for Context
Increasingly, every time there is an unfortunate tragedy be it a raging fire or a terrorist attack we get a torrent of stories heralding the legitimacy of Twitter as a news source. Their core arguments are always the same that social media tools allow for information to be dispatched far faster ...
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10 Green Options for Black Friday
Black Friday - the day after Thanksgiving, and one of the busiest shopping days of the year might be a bit darker this year. Consumer spending is expected to drop slightly with 128 million shoppers planning to head to the malls Friday, Saturday or Sunday, down from 135 million the year before, acc ...
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Another VoIP Startup In Trouble
Regardless of however you spin it, if you are firing 20 percent of your work force and have no real business model to speak off, you are in trouble. That certainly is true of Fring, an Israeli Mobile VoIP start-up, which has cut 10 of its 50 employees. CEO Avi Shechter told TechCrunch that his compa ...
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Can You Be a Good Parent and a Good Blogger?
Thats my personal struggle, but you could insert many all-consuming tasks such as starting up a company, or training for the Olympics for blogging and still get to the heart of my question. Most people believe good blogging is about two things: personality and passion. But where does that leave ...
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For New York Times BlackBerry Storm is a Dud
Looks like for once I am in agreement with The New York Times gadget columnist David Pogue, who eviscerated the new Blackberry Storm device in his review published earlier today. But Ive got a better name for it: the BlackBerry Dud. The first sign of trouble was the concept: a touchscreen BlackBe ...
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Trailer Park 2.0: Where All Your Data Lives
The prospect of outsourcing servers and storage to the cloud has an irresistible lure of operational simplicity and cash efficiency for todays application developers. Cloud computing vendors help operate social networking applications, micro-blogging sites, global gaming networks and a plethora ...
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Terrorist Attacks In Bombay, Follow on Twitter
Another terrorist attack in India, this time in Indias capital city Bombay. I have been following this for a while on Twitter, where people from the city are reporting whatever updates they can get. It is a depressing start to a Thanksgiving weekend here in the US. You can follow the news here on Tw ...
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Twitter Kills SMS in Canada
Citing changes to its billing and costs that are doubling every month, Twitter announced that it will no longer support outbound SMS to Canadians. Twitters searching for a business model (and a Business Product Manager to help out), and in the meantime it has to curtail costs but it doesnt help ...
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Hate Comcast? Get Faster DSL in San Francisco
As you all very well know, I have little patience for Comcast and its anti-innovation policy of metered broadband. If you are like me and are looking for an option, in San Francisco you can get 18 Mbps ADSL2+ connection from Sonic.net, a small ISP which has puts its own gear in nine central offices ...
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Off-Topic: Why Citibank Should Vanish
After a long day, I returned home to find a mound of junk mail clogging my mailbox. Of note was a letter from Citibank informing me that it was jacking up the interest charged on my credit card, adding more fees for foreign transactions and other such issues that might result from an economic meltdo ...
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Why Microsoft Fails to Win Online
Microsofts battle to conquer the web has a certain Moby Dick like quality. Me-too products, muddled branding strategy and constantly playing catchup with competitors has reduced the king of software to a punch line. The more they try, the further they get. In the third quarter of 2008, Microsofts on ...
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Online Santa Claws For Sales This X-Mas
Online retailers are not immune to the current credit crunch and are feeling the heat in a big way. The New York Times says that online spending dropped 4% for the first 23 days of November 2008 when compared to the same period last year. According to comScore, the online spending was about $8.19 bi ...
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