Monkey Island makers destroy Kickstarter records
February 10, 2012
The man who created games including Monkey Island has found a simple way to literally make a million dollars over night. It turns out all you need to do is ask.
Category: business
Growing number of homes choose broadband + broadcast TV
February 10, 2012
More than nine in 10 homes pay for cable television. However, with new economic realities and an increasingly competitive climate, change is very much in the air. Whereas cable’s share has declined, the number of homes with broadband internet continues to rise and, interestingly, many of those with fast internet are choosing to get television the old fashioned way.
Kodak killing cameras, digital picture frames
February 9, 2012
The Rochester, NY-based company synonymous with photography that once employed tens of thousands, but has been acting more like a patent troll of late, is getting out of the business snaps and will focus instead on printing solutions. Momma done took our KodaChrome away and is coming back for the camera — the American icon isn’t gone, but will certainly be less visible.
Kayak, Halliburton dropping Blackberry
February 7, 2012
Slip sliding away. Once upon a time, if you worked for a big corporation that provided a smartphone, chances are that device was a Blackberry — it was the device to have. No more as developers and corporations flee the platform for the greener and more secure pastures of the iPhone.
Let’s play Phone Stack and enjoy our dinner
February 5, 2012
Being addicted to your cell phone is not uncommon. Many of us have a hard time not playing with our phones even when enjoying a dinner out with friends. Just the other night, a friend of mine stopped in mid sentence to answer her phone. That doesn’t include the number of times she answered text messages while we were eating. My phone was dead or I probably would have been right there with her. Enter a new game called Phone Stack that is liable to cost one of us some money.
A spoonful of sugar? RIM sweetens pot for developers
February 3, 2012
Free gift! Or, put another way, how to get a small downpayment on what is probably a bad investment of your time. Research in Motion is looking at you — developers, developers, developers — and, if you port your Android app to QNX in 10 days or less, they are graciously willing to part with an entry-level 16GB PlayBook.
Facebook staff jackpot stories compelling, if not convincing
February 3, 2012
In 2005, Facebook commissioned an artist to paint murals at its headquarters and cheekily offered to pay him in company stock rather than cash. They somehow persuaded him to take the stock: that decision means he’ll soon be worth around $200 million.
Fear factor: iPhone gains underpin Apple’s growing market power
February 2, 2012
When the iPhone 4S shipped last October, smartphone pundits declared it dead on arrival because it “lacked” 4G LTE, a four-inch display, Near Field Communication (NFC) payment functionality and a range of other checklist features that infest offerings from other vendors, especially Android devices. That string of crowd-sourced wisdom turned out to be stupendously wrong, but the real meat of the story isn’t playing out in public.
What we learned from the Facebook IPO
February 2, 2012
When you ask the public for at least five billion dollars, you have to start answering a few questions. And in the case of Facebook’s long-awaited filing for an Initial Public Offering, some of those answers were truly revealing.
Redbox dumps Warner over 56-day window
February 1, 2012
No good business model goes unpunished or so it must appear to Redbox. There is no question that bits encoded on plastic disks (a.k.a. DVDs, Blu-ray) will die sooner rather than later — it only remains to be seen how the remaining dollars get squeezed out.
Verizon prepping shared data plans
January 30, 2012
A long time coming. Consumers first heard about shared data plans from both AT&T and Verizon back in June 2011, but many of us have been hoping the carriers would come to their senses at least since the iPhone hit the scene and revolutionized the smartphone segment back in 2007. Of course, the devil will be found in the details.
Well, at least Samsung’s healthy
January 27, 2012
Many of Apple competitors are having trouble making products people want and, quite naturally, money therefrom. Results from Motorola, LG, Nokia and HTC have all disappointed investors and analysts in recent weeks. Fundamentally, it’s well nigh impossible to compete with Apple on the basis of “kitchen + sink” feature sets and race to bottom pricing.
Now who’s biggest? Apple blows by HP
January 25, 2012
Whoa, nelly. Previously, analysts predicted that Apple’s Mac + iPad computers sales would make it the world’s largest “PC” vendor sometime within the first six months of 2012. So much for those rosy expectations — who thought that the Cupertino, California company would double tablet sales last quarter.
Apple: Follow the money to the chips
January 24, 2012
The bigger they come, the harder they fall. Well, maybe someday (eventually). Until then, everyone’s favorite Cupertino, California-based fruit company controls more of the semiconductor market than anyone and that brings with it incredible perhaps unprecedented power over component supply and pricing, as well as ability to deliver products that no one else can.
Kindle Fire: Normal is as normal does
January 20, 2012
Oh my goodness gracious, Kindle Fire sales are expected to plummet — plummet, I say — this quarter. Are the good times over, the end nigh? Actually, a big fall off after the holiday quarter is perfectly normal and Amazon’s tablet-ish media slate has a case of the post-holiday blues. But how blue is blue?
Kodak Chapter 11: Don’t take our KodaChrome away
January 19, 2012
The company that cracked then conquered the color film and processing market with its once ubiquitous KodaChrome, and invented digital photography has filed for Chapter 11 protection while it reorganizes. In the days and hours leading up to the move, Rochester, NY-based Kodak fired off a series of lawsuits, targeting smartphone makers Samsung, Apple and HTC.
PC sales continue to swirl the bowl
January 17, 2012
There has been quite a bit of back and forth on whether or not the iPad should be considered a personal computer. If it is — a reasonable conclusion by most accounts — then Apple is or very soon will be the world’s biggest computer maker. However, that’s not the end of the bad news for traditional (Windows) PC.
