Microsoft may need an IBM moment of clarity
25 Jul 2008 1:45pm GMT Microsoft’s financial analyst meeting was a tale of a technology conglomerate: You heard a lot about search, a decent bit about the enterprise and all sorts of projects in between. But amid all the coverage–see Mary Jo’s laundry list of stories–I can’t help but wonder if Microsoft’s various ventures aren’t diversions that take away from the [...]
AOL gussies up for potential sale, but who’s buying?
25 Jul 2008 12:22pm GMT AOL is shutting down XDrive, AOL Pictures and other properties in a belt tightening move that may indicate the company is setting itself up to be sold. The larger question: Who will buy AOL from Time Warner? According to a memo posted by TechCrunch, AOL executive vice president Kevin Conroy outlined a reorg that sunsetted some [...]
Netflix ups outlook; Customer acquisition costs fall
25 Jul 2008 12:05pm GMT Netflix said Friday it ended the second quarter with more than 8.4 million subscribers, up 25 percent from a year ago, and spent less money acquiring those customers. Those two factors added up to better than expected quarterly results and an improved outlook. The company has been on a tear of late inking deals that lay [...]
News to know: ‘Spam king’ dead; Microsoft’s cloud; Dell;
25 Jul 2008 9:10am GMT Notable headlines: Ryan Naraine: Escapee ‘Spam King’ dead in apparent murder-suicide CBS Denver Video: ‘Spam King’ Inmate Dies Along With Wife, Daughter Mary Jo Foley: Ozzie foreshadows ‘Zurich,’ Microsoft’s elastic cloud Microsoft to get more ‘Apple-like’ in PC, phone space Vista: Whose ‘reality’ do you believe? Users gravitating to lower-priced Office SKUs Microsoft to show off spherical Surface next week Microsoft confirms...
Dell opts for performance with R5400 data center-hosted desktop
25 Jul 2008 3:33am GMT Dell unveiled its data center-hosted desktop product line on Tuesday. Unlike rivals Hewlett-Packard and IBM, Dell didn’t build its solution on blade servers but instead opted for a high performance system using a 2U box called the Dell Precision R5400 Rack Workstation. “By not putting the solution on a blade, we were able to add more [...]