Archive for February 2008
quarterlife, following its unimpressive debut on NBC last night and creator Marshall Herskovitz’ comments that the show would work better on cable, will no longer be shown on NBC. The show is headed to Bravo, according to an NBC spokesperson. Bravo is committed to … Read More »
Investors in green stocks are getting harder to please. And this week, those invested in EnerNOC are downright displeased.
EnerNOC doesn’t offer an alternative energy to oil. Instead, it helps companies reduce their energy costs by managing their usage more efficiently. At a time when oil … Read More »
What web worker has not dreamed of making a living through micropayments. Use the internet to provide useful information, charge each visitor a penny, and rake in the aggregated cash. The only problem: so far, micropayments have been a big flop; … Read More »
Web series quarterlife “bombed” in its debut on NBC, Marshall Herskovitz told us yesterday. Backpedaling on his candid in-person remarks, Herskovitz’ PR issued a statement today:
“I am happy to say that the reports of quarterlife’s demise are exaggerated. We’re deeply grateful for NBC’s efforts … Read More »
Just out in public beta, GameLayer’s Passively Multiplayer Online Game is a fantasy MMO that’s largely played from a web-based toolbar. But instead of exploring dungeons and killing monsters, as you would in an old-school MMO, there’s a genius twist: You gain points and … Read More »
Millions of dollars keep getting deposited into the bank accounts of video startups. Today didn’t bring any huge deals, but there were a few worth noting:
Dragonfly, a video platform company focused on high-definition, has raised $3 million in funding from angels including former football star … Read More »
After many delays, the Fujitsu P1620 finally arrived at James’ house. This morning we got to chatting about the differences in this refresh of the P1610. We went on and on so much about it, that we cut this one off at seven-and-a-half minutes. Hey, … Read More »
LiquidPlanner touts itself as “a revolution in project management.” That’s probably overstating the case somewhat (there are a lot of project management applications in the world), but it does offer a sophisticated feature set, including some things that I haven’t … Read More »
It’s usually the simple solutions in life that make my day. Case in point with the following scenario: you want your iPhone to vibrate first upon receiving a call, … Read More »
Facebook Superpokes Filmmakers; company launches new fan page called “Facebook Film” to help filmmakers interact with members of the social network. (VentureBeat)
China Central Television to Put Olympic Video on the Web; state-run television partnering with MySpace China and Tudou.com to stream video broadcasts of the … Read More »
As expected, Sprint has announced its Hail Mary Simply Everything plan, offering customers $99 unlimited calling, premium services and DATA! That’s a better bang for your buck, especially for those of us paying $40 a month for unlimited data. Meanwhile, the party line … Read More »
More Must Reads
By Stacey Higginbotham
Feb. 28, 2008, 10:00am PT
Less than a week after the New York Times celebrated Texas’ dominant position in wind power, a cool, still day dawned. The cold weather drove residents to crank up the heat, but the lack of wind to turn turbines pushed the state’s electric grid into … Read More »
By Stacey Higginbotham
Feb. 28, 2008, 9:18am PT
Earlier this month, Google announced a pilot program with the Cleveland Clinic to store patients’ medical records online. Privacy and security concerns were raised, notably that Google doesn’t have to abide by confidentiality rules that govern doctor-patient relationships dictated by HIPAA.
However, Google’s plan … Read More »
By Aliza Sherman
Feb. 28, 2008, 9:00am PT
I rely on my microblog communities as my connection to the outside world while I work from home on my various Web projects and client projects. Twitter is my watercooler. Pownce is where my Second Life friends tend to hang out so … Read More »
By Craig Rubens
Feb. 28, 2008, 8:56am PT
Disney-ABC Television Group has officially taken the wraps off Stage 9 Digital Media, its short-form programing production company, with the premiere of Squeegees, a new broadband comedy series from online sketch comedy group Handsome Donkey.
Stage 9 has a production slate of more … Read More »
Chris Spera over at GearDiary suggests that for many people, it is. He has an excellent though piece with his reasons why and if we’re talking about mainstream consumers only, I’ll come close … Read More »
By Mike Gunderloy
Feb. 28, 2008, 8:00am PT
You’ve probably seen “live blogging” on some of the major blogs: posts that are updated frequently during a news event, whether that be an earnings call or a MacWorld keynote. Toronto-based CoverItLive wants to bring the same experience to your blog. They offer an … Read More »
By Om Malik
Feb. 28, 2008, 7:26am PT
If you thought eBay taking a hefty writedown for its mistake — I mean Skype was shocking — then Sprint’s Nextel deal writedown is going to leave you awed. Sprint Nextel reported a $29.5 billion loss, scratched its dividend and lost 683,000 customers. The company wrote … Read More »
After seeing this hub on Gizmodo, we realized that our manufacturer really goofed. I’m not sure what happened because they got most of our order right: OnTheRun logo man, … Read More »
By Bob Walsh
Feb. 28, 2008, 7:00am PT
Yesterday, the European Union’s Antitrust Commission fined Microsoft another $1.3 billion for not complying with its 2004 anti-trust order to share its undocumented server APIs with competitors until October 2007, bringing total fines in the case to $2.5 billion.
Yesterday’s fine covers the period between June … Read More »
By Larry Chiang
Feb. 28, 2008, 6:20am PT
Using old school voicemail to sell our technology is a lost art. How many of us dread the voice mail prompt?! While closing a deal may be a stretch for beginners, plodding forward with good outbound messages can, and will, close deals.
Before … Read More »
By Jason Harris
Feb. 28, 2008, 6:00am PT
The online office applications market has been heating up lately. The gorilla in the room, Google Docs/Spreadsheets/Presentations, has made a lot of splashes. However Zoho, another strong contender, has recently added new features to their Writer application that are pretty intriguing.
Thesaurus: … Read More »
By Georgia Flight
Feb. 28, 2008, 6:00am PT
Can squeaky-clean (and squeaky-green) Barack Obama turn the dreaded “earmark” into a good thing? The Washington Post recently chided the Clinton camp for attacking Obama as a man of words instead of action by comparing his voting record this Congressional session to that of Hilary Clinton’s. … Read More »
By Stacey Higginbotham
Feb. 28, 2008, 5:54am PT
Butterknife is an episodic web series starring real-life couple Ronald and Mary Bronstein and featuring a cast of their real-life filmmaker friends. The series, a collaboration between Joe Swanberg and the Bronsteins, was commissioned by Spout to promote some of the creative personalities … Read More »
By Carleen Hawn
Feb. 28, 2008, 12:02am PT
Update: for another lesson on the imperative of customer support, spend a few minutes studying Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s decision this week to close hundreds of stores nationwide for 3 hours in order to retrain Baristas in good customer service. The Wall … Read More »
By Katie Fehrenbacher
Feb. 28, 2008, 12:00am PT
For a while, Tesla’s Roadster was pretty much the only really sleek electric sports car making the rounds in the Valley. That ended when Henrik Fisker’s Fisker Automotive unveiled the Karma, a swanky electric sedan with an $80,000 price tag, and said the company had received … Read More »
NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker spoke at Harvard Business School’s Entertainment and Media Conference in Cambridge today. He rebutted claims of network irrelevancy, network neutrality, and Steve Jobs. It was clear that there was a lot of mutual respect and love between the MBA … Read More »
By Judi Sohn
Feb. 27, 2008, 9:01pm PT
We know that wikis can be incredibly useful. But for some reason we’re still trying to figure out, collaborating groups haven’t jumped on the bandwagon. It’s no surprise that Google wanted to be a player in this space with their acquisition of Jotspot in 2006. We’ve … Read More »
By Om Malik
Feb. 27, 2008, 9:00pm PT
Google acquired JotSpot eons ago, so long ago that one almost forgets about the wiki company and its founder, Joe Krause. Apparently Google didn’t let it go to waste. It is now the underpinning of Google Sites, a web-based collaboration software service that is … Read More »
Crackle let go of eight of its 60 employees today after “making some changes across the board,” according to Jonathan Shambroom, the video site’s general manager, who wanted to make sure we knew that the company is still growing its revenue, content library, and even … Read More »
By Craig Rubens
Feb. 27, 2008, 6:30pm PT
Sen. Boxer: EPA “Is In Crisis”: Sen. Barbara Boxer said that EPA’s decision to deny California’s waiver application has caused a huge amount of drama in the agency – Cleantech Media. Also check out Environmental Capital’s take of the “brouhaha” and “intrigue” – WSJ.
GM … Read More »
By Edit Staff
Feb. 27, 2008, 5:08pm PT
Perhaps to prove that they aren’t overpaid, pretty talking heads, network TV anchors are unshackling themselves from their studio sets and venturing out to do some video blogging.
Before last night’s Democratic debate got underway, Brian Williams gave web audiences a little taste of the evening … Read More »
By Craig Rubens
Feb. 27, 2008, 4:43pm PT
Sand Hill Road and Capitol Hill have joined forces to spin businesses out of three of the DOE’s National Laboratories. Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner unveiled the three venture firms selected to participate in the newly established Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) … Read More »
By Samuel Dean
Feb. 27, 2008, 4:00pm PT
If you travel a lot, your cell phone may be able to do a lot more for you than it currently does. The right applications for your phone can create many types of conveniences for you, even if you’re already used to using the standard mapping, … Read More »
Akimbo showed it’s continuing its quest for a successful strategy today with the unveiling of a new service that enables content providers to publish web video on their own sites. Akimbo says its new offering will take care of the content publishing, front-end navigation and … Read More »
By Craig Rubens
Feb. 27, 2008, 2:27pm PT
The next great cleantech company could currently be an underfunded research project in a lab somewhere, likely on a university campus. If it’s somewhere at Stanford, Luis Mejia would love to hear about it. Mejia is a senior associate at Stanford’s office of technology licensing, … Read More »
By Stacey Higginbotham
Feb. 27, 2008, 2:20pm PT
Rhode Island’s efforts to drive innovation and subsequent technology jobs to the state aren’t unusual, but building a technology hub is hard. I’ve watched Austin, Texas, where I live and work, fight to get to the point where it can claim to be a technology … Read More »
