Breaking News, World News, US News, Top News, National News
“For months, several high-quality, full-length bootlegs of the robot love story by Disney’s Pixar unit — released just this week on DVD in the U.S. — have been freely available to watch on the YouTube-like Chinese video site 56.com, which has had Disney as an investor since 2006. The bootlegs were put there by users of the site, and could be located even by visitors who don’t read or speak Chinese.” [Link]
“Abraham K. Biggs committed suicide on Wednesday while broadcasting himself on video site Justin.tv. As we understand it from various forum posts, the 19-year-old Floridian was apparently egged on by commenters on Justin.tv and fellow forum users on bodybuilding.com. Biggs overdosed on pills while on camera and appeared to be breathing for hours until watchers realized he might be serious, at which point they alerted the police. The video kept running until police and EMTs broke Biggs’ door down and blocked the camera’s view. ” [Link]
“Yahoo announced that Yang, 40, will step down as CEO and return to his former role as “Chief Yahoo.” The company’s board said it has hired headhunter Heidrick & Struggles to find a replacement. Yang has come under fire for his inability to turnaround the company in his past 17 months as CEO. During his short tenure, Yahoo has had two major rounds of layoffs and has seen its search market share shrink significantly while a series of reorganizations led to the departure of senior executives. Yang was heavily criticized by Wall Street and shareholders for failing to reach an agreement to sell the company to Microsoft.” [Link]
“JellyCloud, a Redwood City, Calif.-based targeted ad network, closed its doors this month after raising $11.5 million in venture-capital funding earlier this year. Adzilla, a similar network in San Francisco, also ceased operations. San Francisco-based AdBrite, which was founded in 2002 by Internet entrepreneurs Philip Kaplan and Gidon Wise and has raised a total of $35 million in funding, recently cut 40% of its work force to make itself profitable.” [Link]
“Yahoo announced plans on Tuesday to lay off at least 10 percent of its workforce, some 1,400 employees, as the weak economy cut deeply into third-quarter profits at the struggling Web company. Yahoo said net profit for the third-quarter of the year was 54 million dollars, or four cents per share, down from 151 million dollars and 11 cents per share during the same period of 2007.” [Link]
“The Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet company is expected to disclose the cost cuts as soon as Tuesday, when it reports quarterly earnings, say people familiar with the matter. The cuts will involve layoffs, among other things, these people say.” [Link]
“A tipster tells us that Yahoo plans to cut 3,500 jobs, chiefly in sales and finance, on December 10 — while keeping plans for a multimillion-dollar holiday party days before the cuts” [Link]
Choi Jin Sil picture
“Choi, 39, apparently succumbed to a suicidal impulse provoked by malicious online rumors, the police said after studying memos found at her home and interviewing friends and relatives. Those online accusations claimed that Choi - who once won a government medal for her saving habit and whose name, Jin Sil, means ‘truth’ - was a loan shark. They claimed that an actor named Ahn Jae Hwan, who gassed himself in his car last month, was driven to suicide because Choi pressed him relentlessly to repay a $2 million debt.” [Link]
“During the first day of its release Sept. 2, Google Chrome rocketed to 1% of the market, Net Applications said. Since then, the upstart browser has fallen to 0.77% as of last week, with the losses shared evenly between IE and Firefox. ‘A bunch of people gave it a quick try, and its share has been sliding ever since,’ Vince Vizzaccaro, executive VP of marketing for Net Applications, told InformationWeek. ” [Link]
Oprah picture
“Internet users, as well as editors making edits on Wikinews and Wikipedia, have been the victims of a recent hoax that talk show host Oprah Winfrey has been found dead in her Chicago, Illinois home. The rumors are considered to be a hoax, connected with the online group known as Anonymous. Other reports say that the website 4chan.org is responsible for starting the rumor which began to spread quickly over the Internet. ” [Link]
“Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, an Internet tracking company, said one of the major shifts in Internet use in the past decade had been the fall off in interest in pornography or adult entertainment sites. He said surfing for porn had dropped to about 10 percent of searches from 20 percent a decade ago, and the hottest Internet searches now are for social networking sites.” [Link]
“Amy Poehler will launch and star in a new web series for young girls. Smart Girls at the Party will be created and distributed through ON Networks and ‘celebrates young girls who are changing the world by being themselves,’” [Link]
“Why doesn’t News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch just make it official? His wife, Wendi Deng, serves as ‘chief strategist’ for MySpace China, the media conglomerate’s Internet outpost in her homeland. MySpace China CEO Luo Chuan has just quit. Just promote her already, Rupert!” [Link]
Recent Comments