by Kara Swisher in BoomTown at 8:47 am PT
The third time is charming, in fact, as has been every appearance on "Saturday Night Live" by Tina Fey impersonating Republican Vice Presidential candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. This one, of course, is on last week's debate between Palin and Democratic VP candidate Sen. Joe Biden, with Queen Latifah also doing a perfect double-taking turn as moderator Gwen Ifill. Read more »
by John Paczkowski in Digital Daily at 8:38 am PT
The legal broadside Hollywood lobbed at RealNetworks last week has upset the company’s carefully prepared plans to offer a mainstream means of legally copying DVDs. A judge has issued a temporary ban on sales of Real’s RealDVD software in the wake of a lawsuit brought against it by the Motion Picture Association of America. Read more »
by John Paczkowski in Digital Daily at 7:23 am PT
The hammer has fallen at eBay. This morning the online auctioneer sacked about 1,000 permanent employees and a few hundred temps, about 10 percent of its workforce. That’s a bit less than the 1,500 workers for whom the company was rumored to be writing up pink slips, but it’s substantial just the same. Read more »
by John Paczkowski in Digital Daily at 5:27 am PT
With a 4.8 percent share of the search market, according to comScore, Ask has long been the inveterate fourth-place contestant in a sector overwhelmingly dominated by Google. And try as it might--with both redesigns and ad campaigns--the company just can’t seem to build any audience beyond that. So there’s little reason to believe that Ask’s latest redesign--its third in as many years and the 11th since it first launched--won’t be as ineffective as those that have gone before it. Read more »
by Eric Savitz in Voices at 5:01 am PT
Isn’t the theory supposed to be that in time of economic stress, Americans hunker down at home and watch more videos? Well, maybe not. Netflix this morning reduced its guidance on subscriber growth for both the third and fourth quarters, while very slightly adjusting its Q4 financial outlook. Read more »
by Nitrozac and Snaggy in Voices at 4:52 am PT
Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears twice weekly in the Voices section of this site. (Click on the image to see a bigger version.) Read more »
by Beth Callaghan in Digital Daily at 4:49 pm PT
The week ending Oct. 3, 2008 was a momentous one, and not solely because of ongoing McCain-Obama high jinks like Tina Fey's encore as Sarah Palin on "Saturday Night Live" or the one and only Web site where you can decide the race in a Kung-Fu Election.
First and foremost, this week's big slide on Wall Street hit tech stocks with a vengeance, too, disproving Google CEO Eric Schmidt's assertion a little more than a week ago: "My guess is that the drama is New York and not here." Ouch. But don't say BoomTown didn't warn you. Ted Ullyot, Facebook's new general counsel, has "strong ties to the Republican Party." Including a stint in former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's office, where, as chief of staff, he handled the government's response to the the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's indentity. "Ted's arrival demonstrates we're a little more grown up." No word on whether or not you need to change your status immediately."
Read more »
by John Paczkowski in Digital Daily at 2:24 pm PT
How do you persuade TV viewers to watch advertisements when the DVR has accustomed them to skip through them? That’s the dilemma facing television and cable networks today, one that’s so far defied a solution. But perhaps not for much longer. Read more »
by John Paczkowski in Digital Daily at 5:19 pm PT
The financial markets’ descent into the maelstrom over the past several weeks is proving quite a test of faith for Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal. Last week he cut his estimates for Yahoo, citing the company’s deteriorating fundamentals. Since then he’s become increasingly dismayed by Wall Street’s continued collapse. Read more »
by Eric Savitz in Voices at 5:17 pm PT
IDG News Service is reporting this afternoon that Microsoft (MSFT) has instituted a hiring freeze, apparently in response to the deteriorating economy. According to IDG, the company started notifying employees of the freeze today. The company has 91,000 employees worldwide, including 54,000 in the U.S. Read more »