More stories from Om Malik

Renkoo, a Redwood City, Calif-based startup that is fast approaching its fourth birthday is rebooting…again. Co-founded by Adam Rifkin (CEO) and Joyce Park (CTO), the company had launched Renkoo.com as a social planner, pitching themselves as Evite 2.0. But in 2007, the pair changed tactics and […] Read more »

[qi:011] A few weeks ago Terry Gou, chairman of Taiwan-based Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the world’s largest original equipment maker, warned that the troubles facing the technology industry (because of the global economic downturn) were much steeper than people realized. His comments were met with […] Read more »

Americans, by nature, are an optimistic bunch. Even in tough times, there is something to be optimistic about. Where others see the glass half empty, we see it as half full. That is probably the only reasonable explanation for the findings of this survey conducted by […] Read more »

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[qi:___wifi] New Yorkers, long used to getting free Wi-Fi Internet access in some of their bigger parks, will no longer enjoy the connectivity. WiFi Salon, a company that was offering free Wi-Fi in 10 parts of four New York City boroughs, shut down because of a […] Read more »

Sometimes you can’t make this stuff up: “Music companies aren’t tech companies, although we depend on tech innovation for the evolution of our business,” Michael Nash, Warner Music Group’ s executive vice president for digital strategy and business development tells The Wall Street Journal. The fight […] Read more »

If I had to name one collaboration application that I to use on an almost daily basis, with the exception of Google Docs, my answer would be Cisco’s WebEx. A lot of companies make pitches to me using WebEx. Despite its patchy performance on the Mac, […] Read more »

It wasn’t quite the same lively Macworld keynote without Steve Jobs, but it looks like self-deprecating Phil Schiller, Apple’s VP of worldwide product marketing, did an admirable job of introducing a whole slew of products, including the new Macbook Pro (17-inch version) and the new DRM […] Read more »

I have been a frequent user of Truphone since it launched its mobile VoIP service over two years ago. What started as a simple VoIP client for Nokia Symbian S60 devices is fast becoming a unified client that does it all. You can make low-cost calls […] Read more »

Xobni, a San Francisco-based maker of software for email services, has raised $7 million in fresh funding led by Cisco Systems. Existing investors Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures and Atomico also invested in this round of founding. In a blog posting, the company said […] Read more »

Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs today issued a letter that outlines why he is skipping the Macworld: He has a hormonal imbalance that caused him to drastically lose weight, and he needs to take care of it ASAP. His weight loss had led to rampant […] Read more »

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Marrying web applications with voice has long been seen as the proverbial pot of gold: easy to dream about but hard to actually find. A few startups (and some large companies) are trying to solve the problem; some are using Voice XML, while others are betting […] Read more »

Updated with press release and confirmation from the two companies at the end of the post. The current economic downturn has put a chill on telecom spending, forcing everyone from Alcatel-Lucent to Ciena Corp. to run for cover. The situation is even more precarious for startups […] Read more »

Ever since I sat down with Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, at our NewTeeVee Live conference this past November, I have a new-found appreciation for the Los Gatos, Calif.-based company and its plans to capture the video-over-broadband market. (Watch his conversation with Chris Albrecht and […] Read more »

Ooma, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based VoIP phone hardware and services platform that has been struggling to live up to its initial hype is going to take a second run at mainstream success. At CES 2009, the company is launching the Ooma Telo, a wireless handset that […] Read more »

Santa has been really nice to social networking websites this holiday season. Whether it was more broadband connections or simply bad weather, many popular web services saw a nice bump in their traffic this holiday season. In US, YouTube accounted for about 1.35% of total US […] Read more »

Hitwise, a data analytics and research company, today released a report that indicated a big spike in Facebook traffic on Christmas Eve. The research firm says that Facebook hit a new high, with traffic “reaching 2.18% of all U.S. Internet visits compared with 1.42% average for […] Read more »

JPG magazine, the flagship offering of San Francisco startup 8020 Publishing Inc., is shutting down. And so is the company. The subscribers were informed of the decision in an email earlier today. 8020 was co-founded by Technorati and BitTorrent alumni and backed by CNET founder Halsey […] Read more »

For the past few days, the VoIP community has been indulging in a bit of soul-searching. The debate: Is VoIP dead? To pragmatists such as Alec Saunders, the answer is yes. In his well-reasoned polemic, “2008: The Year VoIP Died,” he succinctly writes, “Voice over IP […] Read more »

As 2008 takes its final breaths, I am sitting in my apartment, which is enveloped in a thick fog that’s hiding both the ugly high-rises and the beauty that is the San Francisco Bay. The fog is also muting the sounds of the city — a […] Read more »

Jon Stewart, others to go off the air on Jan. 1 for Time Warner customers. [NewTeeVee] It’s not easy being green. The Solar iPhone experiment fails. [jkOnTheRun] China to build a 1 GW solar plant, Portuguese happy with 46 MWs. [Earth2Tech] The ultimate Mac browser roundup. […] Read more »

With every tick of the clock, 2008 is taking its final steps toward 2009, when the year starts afresh. From a broadband perspective it has been an eventful year –- one that was good, bad and ugly. Here is a rundown of 10 stories that defined […] Read more »

Updated: Back in October, when I broke the news that uber venture fund Sequoia Capital had organized a secret meeting in which it warned its portfolio companies to prepare for the pending financial apocalypse, the revelation was met with some skepticism. Some thought Sequoia was using […] Read more »

As 2008 comes to a close, my dream of building a quality blog network that was more than just GigaOM has become a reality. While I have always believed in the quality of our editorial product, today we got a third-party affirmation of our efforts. PC […] Read more »

I am highly skeptical when big companies get trendy and start spewing cool. Lately going green has become the new black. Dell in particular has been making a lot of noise about being “green,” most recently bragging that it has becoming carbon neutral five months ahead […] Read more »

Cisco Systems, a company best known for selling mundane (albeit very lucrative) routers, switches and other networking gear, plans to launch a whole series of products at the upcoming CES that fall under the connected, networked entertainment category. But in order for Cisco to compete with Samsung, Sony and even Apple in the consumer electronics space, the company would need to rewire its entire DNA. And unfortunately, it ain’t got the skills. Read more »

BroadSoft, of Gaithersburg, Md., has finally said what has been rumored for so long: It has acquired Sylantro Systems Corp., a VoIP applications developer based in Campbell, Calif., for an undisclosed amount of money. From what I’ve heard, no cash changed hands, though BroadSoft might have […] Read more »

This past weekend, we had yet another tempest in a teapot here in the blogosphere, this time over what, exactly, determines the authority of a tweet on Twitter. Some argued that the number of followers is the best yardstick with which to measure how important a […] Read more »

Last week, jkOnTheRun broke the news that Psion Teklogix, owner of the “Netbook” trademark, was sending cease-and-desist (C&D) letters to some blogs and smaller web sites. The news stirred up enough controversy that Psion’s law firm, Origin, sent a response to jkOnTheRun to clarify a few […] Read more »

Exactly one year ago today I was overcome by what seemed like a case of bad heartburn, but what the medical professionals at UCSF would later diagnose as a heart attack. Within just a few minutes, my life changed irrevocably…and in hindsight, for the better. I […] Read more »

Santa was apparently good to Amazon.com this year; the e-tailer says its 14th holiday (shopping) season was its best ever, though it doesn’t offer any data to back up that cheery claim. Its biggest sellers (based on number of units ordered) included the Samsung 52-inch LCD […] Read more »

Like many, the market collapse of the past few months has forced me to pay closer-than-usual attention to financial news. I’ve had to rely primarily on mainstream publications; with my day set up to revolve around all things tech, unearthing valuable, alternate sources of info can […] Read more »

To all of you who have had a rough time traveling this holiday something to put a little smile on your tired face. Hope you have arrived at your destination and are enjoying some quality family time. And to all of you who are part of […] Read more »

Most would agree that Time Warner overpaid when it bought social network Bebo back in March. Given the challenges faced by the company’s online businesses since then, among them declining ad sales and the difficulty of monetizing social networks, the $850 million price tag for Bebo […] Read more »

[qi:080] Darkstrand, a Chicago-based startup planning to commercialize the fiber network built as part of the National LambdaRail (NLR) project, is — like most of its telecom brethren — facing a rocky road. NLR is a federally funded network that connects about 30 universities across the […] Read more »

Amazing! I have been watching the spat between Google’s YouTube and Warner Music Group play out in the media — both online and in its offline variants. The bottom line of this corporate he said she said is that there are no more music videos that […] Read more »

Update: Looks like WMATA has backed off and is going to be more open. The decision came after lot of local criticism at the action to not give Google access to the data. It is still not clear if the data is going to be shared […] Read more »

The Wall Street Journal talked to many people to find out where companies would be spending their precious dollars in 2009. Here is a quick look at what may sell in 2009: Software as a Service: Today 10 percent of total software sales come from on-demand […] Read more »

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