Layoffs are cropping up all over the tech industry, with workers at companies ranging from AOL to Adobe to Microsoft getting pink slips. But while most people know to turn to the big online job boards and social networks ranging from LinkedIn to Facebook to help land a new gig, there are a lot of off-the-beaten-track online paths that can be taken as well. Below are 12 proven tech job search resources that you may not be using yet. Good luck! Continue »

You’ve gotta hand it to Google: The company is never shy about throwing the proverbial spaghetti against the wall to see if it will stick. Over the years, it’s introduced countless projects that have gone through long beta cycles only to fail miserably — or achieve a degree of success far below what was expected. Google Docs, for example, was supposed to topple Microsoft Office, and is still predicted to do so, but if that ever happened, I missed it.

Next year, Google will introduce one of its most ambitious projects yet: Chrome OS (GigaOM Pro, subscription req’d). There are quite a few misconceptions going around about the new operating system, among them that it’s aimed squarely at Microsoft’s operating system hegemony. It’s not. Chrome OS is targeting netbooks, not desktop and server systems. Still, the operating system includes some bold gambles from Google. Here are four of them. Continue »

Air Canada is testing an in-flight Wi-Fi service from Aircell on its flights between Toronto and Los Angeles and Montreal and L.A. From now until Jan. 29, passengers can plunk down $9.95 per flight to surf on a laptop and $7.95 to access the Internet on smaller devices such as a smartphone or WiFi-enabled media players like the iPod touch. AirCell also provides its GoGo in-air Wi-Fi service on Delta and American Airlines flights in the U.S.

And because Aircell currently only has regulatory approval and the antenna coverage that enables airlines to offer Wi-Fi in the U.S., Air Canada passengers can only get their Wi-Fi fix when flying over U.S. soil. Perhaps that accounts for the slight discount on Air Canada’s prices for Wi-Fi when compared to American’s charge of $12.95 for in-flight access.

Twitter COO Dick Costolo, speaking today on a panel at TechCrunch’s Real-Time CrunchUp event in San Francisco, shed some light into the micromessaging service’s revenue plans, promising that it will begin taking a cut of its partners’ advertising revenues “early next year.” Meanwhile, it will “foster mechanisms that allow partners to do more sophisticated things” with its APIs. Twitter also plans to offer commercial accounts that contain premium features like analytics dashboards and multiple authors, according to Costolo. Continue »

The Windows 7 trumpets are blasting with gusto, with Steve Felice, president of the small and medium-sized business (SMB) division of Dell, claiming that Microsoft’s new operating system is fueling a surge in demand for PCs, according to Computerworld.  “As soon as Oct. 22 hit, both our consumer business and our SMB business had a very healthy increase in demand,” Felice is quoted as saying. Meanwhile, David Coursey reports that with Vista on the sidelines and a well-reviewed new OS, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer “has a new ‘f’ word” to describe Windows: ‘Fantastic.’”

These comments fall in line with recent lofty predictions from Dell founder Michael Dell about Windows 7 driving the PC market forward. But is that, in fact, true? Moreover, is it not still too early to measure the operating system’s success? Continue »

Updated: Infoaxe is revealing to the world today its alter ego: a search engine. Unlike other real-time search engines such as OneRiot, Infoaxe doesn’t depend on Twitter streams and the like (Update: OneRiot emailed to note that it also uses a panel in addition to social sharing streams). Instead, it anonymously harvests data from its millions (low millions, for now) of people who use its personal search history plug-in. Continue »