Technology Industry Archive

Many music lovers may be using language considerably stronger than the Elizabethan term “zounds” if they own the 30GB models of the Microsoft Zune — because at the start of today (midnight Pacific time), many of these units (no way to know the total yet) began failing. The official Microsoft statement doesn’t provide solid information: We are aware that customers with...

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There are rumors that Microsoft is planning some massive layoffs in the middle of January. The way the company is handling questions can only lead you to think that any reports have some basis in truth. Some reports say that staff has already heard and that the numbers could be as high as 17 percent worldwide. That’s a huge cut, and given that Microsoft had been crowing a few months ago...

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You can’t have an industry without income, and the smaller the income, the smaller the industry. By that measure, anyone with something to lose in the technology industry should be nervous when looking at the revenue generation front. It’s grim — a lot more so than many companies are openly admitting. Ironically, that isn’t all bad, because we’re in the middle of...

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Apple and Psystar tousle gets weirder — If you don’t take the commotion too seriously, Apple’s suit against Mac clone manufacturer Psystar and the latter’s attempts at counteractions are pretty amusing and worthy in some cases of minor conspiracy theories. Psystar is claiming that Apple doesn’t own a registered copyright for its current OS and manual versions,...

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Sirius XM got approval from shareholders for a reverse stock split and now is working on a plan to issue over 108 million new shares of stock. The latest financial moves by Sirius are necessary, given a stock price that’s a little over a dime a share, potential Nasdaq delisting, $193.6 million in convertible bonds maturing in February as part of about $1 billion in loan repayments next...

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Shortly after posting about HP’s latest 10-k, I received an email from an HP internal PR person who wanted to talk about “a few points” with me. Apparently the company didn’t like my take on its declining R&D spending and wanted to spin it as not being a decrease at all. Here’s what they said and how I pointed out that whether they liked it or not, R&D...

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Hasbro drops suit against Scrabulous– The brothers who wrote Scrabulous, the popular online version of the word game Scrabble, said that they won’t use that name any more and Harbro has agreed to drop its suits. Watchers are expecting joint custody of q, x, z, and any other high-scoring letters. [Source: AP] Siemens settles cases and will pay huge fines — Siemens pled guilty...

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HP released its 10K for fiscal year 2008 last night. Here are some highlights from a first digging into the document, including more efficient operations over the last two years, at least by some measures, and potential financial weaknesses going forward. They should be of interest to shareholders, competitors, customers, and vendors alike. About 69 percent of all its roughly $118.4 billion net...

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Amazon accused of badly treating U.K. workers — Amazon.com in the U.K. is allegedly forcing workers to report seven days a week are firing anyone taking a sick day. There’s nothing like invoking Dickens at this time of the year, although the image is more typically A Christmas Carol and not a workhouse. [Source: Washington Post] AMD thinking smaller — AMD has launched some...

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Yahoo said Wednesday that it will make its user logs anonymous within 90 days as it ups the ante on data retention policies. In a statement (Techmeme), Yahoo said it would also make user data on page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks anonymous as well as its user logs. The only exceptions would be for “fraud, security and legal obligations.” Clearly, Yahoo, Google and others are...

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