Top Items:
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Steve Ballmer's Entire Memo to the Microsoft Troops About Layoffs and Weak Results — Here is the full memo to employees from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (pictured here) about the 5,000 layoffs and other cost cuts just announced, due to economic slowdown, which also resulted in weak financial results for the second quarter.
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Microsoft:
Microsoft Reports Second-Quarter Results — Modest revenue growth despite difficult economy; announces cost management initiatives. — Microsoft Corp. today announced revenue of $16.63 billion for the second quarter ended Dec. 31, 2008, a 2% increase over the same period of the prior year.
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft:
Microsoft to cut 5,000 jobs — The official word on layoffs is out: Microsoft is going to cut 5,000 jobs over the next 18 months, 1,400 of them today, January 22. — From the company's Q2 earnings release: … I was predicting the Softies were going to get by simply by shuffling folks around and quietly closing groups.
Google Investor Relations:
Google Announces Fourth Quarter And Fiscal Year 2008 Results — Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced financial results for the quarter and for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2008. — “Google performed well in the fourth quarter, despite an increasingly difficult economic environment.
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Jay Adelson / Digg the Blog:
Brief update on Digg — Wanted to reach out to folks with an update on Digg and our priorities for 2009 as well as address some of the recent speculation about our business. — As we've often stated over the past couple of months, given the current economic climate, we've made the decision …
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Rafe Needleman / Webware.com:
Digg to cut workforce 10%, hire new sales team — Digg CEO Jay Adelson on Thursday morning is announcing that the social media site is laying off a “very small” portion of its workforce, but will also be hiring a new direct sales force and head of sales to drive the company to profitability this year.
Discussion:
VentureBeat
Anne E. Kornblut / Washington Post:
Obama Staff Arrives to White House Stuck in Dark Ages of Technology — If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past. — Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign …
Discussion:
InfoWorld, The Open Road, Beet.TV, Infinite Loop, Collaboration 2.0, Gawker, PC World, CrunchGear, Gearlog, BUZZ NEWSROOM, Between the Lines, Switched, The Social Times, Gizmodo, goosegrade.com, Xbox 360 Fanboy, Engadget and eWeek
Wall Street Journal:
Even in Test Form, Windows 7 Leaves Vista in the Dust — This will be a big year for new operating systems. Apple plans a new version of its Macintosh operating system, to be called Snow Leopard. Palm plans an all-new smart phone operating system called Palm WebOS.
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Ed Bott / Ed Bott's Windows Expertise:Windows 7 earns kudos from surprising sources
Discussion:
New York Times
Stephen Hutcheon / Sydney Morning Herald:
Watch out Wikipedia, here comes Britannica 2.0 — Encyclopedia Britannica president Jorge Cauz. Inset: Wikipedia's cofounder Jimmy Wales. — In a move to take on Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia Britannica is inviting the hoi polloi to edit, enhance and contribute to its online version.
Discussion:
Epicenter, ReadWriteWeb, Ars Technica, Webware.com, Obsessable, Times of London, Techmamas and the Econsultancy blog
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Intego:
Mac Trojan Horse OSX.Trojan.iServices.A Found in Pirated Apple iWork 09 — Exploit: OSX.Trojan.iServices.A Trojan Horse — Description: Intego has discovered a new Trojan horse, OSX.Trojan.iServices.A, which is currently circulating in copies of Apple's iWork 09 found on BitTorrent trackers …
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Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Nokia Cuts 2009 View After Grim Q4 Report; Stock Slides — Nokia (NOK) this morning reported a dismal Q4 - and forecast more grim days ahead. — The world's largest handset maker posted sales of 12.67 billion Euros, down 19.5% from 15.7 billion a year ago. Revenue was up 3% sequentially.
HTC:
ALL NEW HTC TOUCH CRUISE WITH HTC FOOTPRINTS™ HELPS CAPTURE AND RELIVE LIFE'S JOURNEYS — Compact and Sophisticated Design Delivers an Advanced Location-Based Experience That Changes How People View Their Locations and Memories — HTC Corporation, a global leader in mobile phone innovation …
Discussion:
jkOnTheRun, Gearlog, Engadget, mobile-review, Electronista, Mobilewhack.com, Phone Scoop, Crave, Unwired View, Boy Genius Report, GPS Obsessed, Mobile Roar and VoIP & Gadgets Blog
Sarah Lacy:
Google Dethroned? — by sarah lacy. — There's a truism in Silicon Valley that Peter Thiel describes in my book: No publicly-traded Internet company stays on top for more than four years. We saw it with Netscape, Yahoo, eBay, and I think we started seeing the beginnings of it with Google at the end of 2008.
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Stanford Students Release A Cool Batch Of iPhone Apps — Students from Stanford's Fall 1008 iPhone class CS193P created a nice crop of apps that are now available or will be soon for the iPhone (see our Stanford Facebook apps posts here and here). — A list of them is here, and some of them I'm going to keep on my phone.
PC Pro:
Q&A: Microsoft defends return to DRM — Microsoft yesterday unveiled its MSN Mobile Music service - and a surprise return to digital rights management (DRM). — While companies such as Apple and Amazon have finally moved to music download services free of copy protection …
Jessan Hutchison-Quillian / Gmail Blog:
Watch videos right in Gmail chat — My friends always hate it when I multi-task in other tabs while chatting with them (they can tell because of my obviously delayed reactions...). But sometimes it's not my fault: if they send me a link to a YouTube video, I have to open another tab in order to watch it.
Paul Buchheit:
Communicating with code — Some people can sell their ideas with a brilliant speech or a slick powerpoint presentation. — I can't. — Maybe that's why I'm skeptical of ideas that are sold via brilliant speeches and slick powerpoints. Or maybe it's because it's too easy to overlook the messy details …
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily:
Advanced Micro Devices Q4 Even Worse Than Expected — Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) this afternoon posted even worse fourth quarter results that the Street had expected. — For the quarter, the company posted revenue of $1.162 billion, below the Street consensus of $1.23 billion, down 35% sequentially and off 33% from a year earlier.
Discussion:
Business Wire
Steve O'Hear / last100:
What if Apple sued Palm, would Microsoft come to the rescue? — When the iPhone first launched at Macworld in 2007, I distinctly remember Apple CEO Steve Jobs boasting that the company had over 200 patents on this thing. At the time, that boast stuck out like a sore thumb …
David Chartier / Infinite Loop:
Interview: iPhone dev gets existential about “crap” apps — There has been no shortage of stories lately about the success of inane, debatably offensive iPhone apps, and their developers are typically (and understandably) thrilled at making it big in the App Store.
Karl Bode / DSLreports:
Comcast To Launch Online Backup Service - In 10, 50, or 200GB flavors...will count against new cap... Comcast insiders have informed Broadband Reports that the cable giant will soon be launching an online backup and storage service called Comcast Secure Backup and Share, for which customers can pay a monthly or yearly fee.
Discussion:
GigaOM
Ryan Paul / Ars Technica:
An odd choice to help government with open source strategy — In an effort to reduce rising government IT costs, the Obama administration could turn to open source software. Sun cofounder and former CEO Scott McNealy says that the Obama administration has asked him to prepare a paper …
Rafe Needleman / Webware.com:
Washington Post launches database of political who's whos — The Washington Post today is launching Who Runs Gov, a site primarily made up of a database of personalities in the United States government. If you're looking for info on your state's senator or representative …
