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High School Musical picture
“If a person opens a High School Musical-themed video or song on any peer-to-peer network such as eMule or eDonkey, his or her computer may be infected with infected by VB.ADQ, the Agent.KGR Trojan, the adware Koolbar, or another strain of malicious code. ” [Link]
“A former ATM software designer for a large bank, Demeter created ‘Trism’ in his spare time and pitched it to Apple last spring. The company made the game available for download with the July launch of its App Store, an online provider of applications for its iPods and iPhones. Priced at $5, ‘Trism’ earned Demeter $250,000 in profits the first two months. ‘It’s done phenomenal business,’ said Demeter, 29, who lives in the California’s San Francisco Bay area. ‘I’m very honored that so many people would enjoy my game. I get e-mails from 50-year-old ladies who say, ‘I don’t play games, but I love Trism.’ That’s the coolest thing.’” [Link]
Second Life picture
“Amy Taylor, 28, said she had caught husband David Pollard, 40, having sex with an animated woman. The couple, who met in an Internet chatroom in 2003, are now separated. ‘I went mad — I was so hurt. I just couldn’t believe what he’d done,’ Taylor told the Western Morning News. ‘It may have started online, but it existed entirely in the real world and it hurts just as much now it is over.’” [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]
“The latest bad news to hit was word that blogging software developer Six Apart has laid off about 8 percent of its 200-plus staff. In a post on the company’s public blog, CEO Chris Alden announced the cuts, writing, ‘We are reducing the size of our full-time staff by around 8 percent and are making some organizational changes as we prepare for 2009.’” [Link]
“According to an anonymous and unverified insider tip, Circuit City is closing 155 stores and withdrawing. This will be officially announced tomorrow at 8am, says our source. The tipster says that store employees were told this morning. No information was provided at that time about severance pay.” [Link]
“According to a rather sizeable thread over at the Apple discussion forums, a number of users are experiencing a curious problem that causes the track pad on their new Macbook to freeze up and stop registering clicks after 50 or so successful pushes. The freeze seems to last for 5-10 clicks, after which the button begins functioning again.” [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]
HP Mini 1000 MIE picture
“The HP Mini 1000 comes in three versions, with starting prices ranging from $379 to $699, and will be available at retailers worldwide starting Wednesday. HP first dipped its toe into the mini-notebook market back in April with the Mini-Note 2133, which it claimed was strictly for K through 12 students and some business travelers. At the time, HP was adamant that this was not meant to play in the same arena as the consumer-oriented Netbook from Asus, the Eee PC. Though it won’t break out the numbers, HP now says the sales of the 2133 ‘exceeded all expectations.’ ” [Link]
“Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday that regular PC users will be able to test out a “beta” version of Windows early next year. Windows 7, the forthcoming operating system, will let users choose to see fewer alerts and warnings from their computers.” [Link]
“Samsung Electronics Co. is equipping Blu-ray DVD players so they can retrieve movies and TV shows from Netflix Inc.’s Internet streaming service, accelerating Netflix’s push to develop more delivery methods beyond the mail. The deal, to be announced Thursday, could set the stage for Netflix to embed software connecting to its streaming service directly into television sets made by Samsung.” [Link]
Miley Cyrus picture
“Nineteen-year-old Josh Holly told Wired.com that his Murfreesboro, Tenn.home was raided by the FBI on Monday, during which the authorities seized three computers and a cell phone. ‘I was just kind of shaking. I was thrown way off guard,’ he told Wired.com. ‘I guess somebody ended up ratting me out.’” [Link]
Playboy Playmate picture
“In a filing with the SEC last week, Playboy revealed that it is planning to dump the production of its bunny-laden soft core DVDs and concentrate on producing content for online viewing instead. ‘We will continue to deliver more of our content digitally, using our assets across multiple distribution platforms and adding more a la carte offerings,’ CEO Christie Hefner (yep, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner’s daughter) wrote in a memo to employees. ‘Given the declines in the DVD market, we will exit that business in phases over a few months to concentrate on selling that content online.’ ” [Link]
Britney Spears picture
“Already Britney Spears’ new twitter account also has 2,323 followers and 16 updates. While this isn’t a lot of followers compared to other big name marketers on Twitter, this is a sure to be one of the fastest growing accounts. Not to mention the free exposure Twitter will get out out it.” [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]
“Federal authorities in Chicago say they’ve shut down one of the largest spam e-mail operations in the world. The Federal Trade Commission says the group generated e-mails promoting sales of prescription drugs and ‘male enhancement’ pills. The FTC says authorities closed the operation by working with their counterparts in New Zealand.” [Link]
World Of Warcraft picture
“The main reason is to invade Stormwind and Ironforge when they reach top level. I’m sure the Alliance will put up a big fight when that happens. We’ll see how it goes. If they don’t make level 70 before Wrath of the Lich King, then it will be at level 80. That is my main goal. That will probably happen after I’ve got some PvP gear from the battlegrounds. I’m also planning to do some 25 and 10 man raid instances but that is secondary to my PvP goal. ” [Link]
“‘If the [iTunes music store] was forced to absorb any increase in the … royalty rate, the result would be to significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss - which is no alternative at all,’ Cue wrote. ‘Apple has repeatedly made it clear that it is in this business to make money, and most likely would not continue to operate [the iTunes music store] if it were no longer possible to do so profitably.’” [Link]
“Walmart began selling DRM-free tracks in its music store in August of last year. 13 months later, the mega-corp has decided to follow the footsteps of so many others and hit the kill switch on its DRM management servers.” [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]
Google G1 picture
“US telecom carrier T-Mobile is slated to unveil on September 23 a ‘Google phone’ built by Taiwanese firm HTC and to have the device for sale in stores as early as October. Google is hoping Android will become the dominant operating system for mobile phones. It is designed to improve the speed and quality of using the Internet on handsets.” [Link]
John Hodgman and Justin Long in Apple Mac ads
“Turns out that phase two of the ‘I’m a PC ‘ advertising counterattack against Apple was… created on a Mac. … The offending evidence was metadata found in the images of the PC user featured on the ‘I’m a PC’ web site. The data exposed the fact that the images were produced using Macs running Adobe Creative Suite 3.” [Link]
Steve Jobs picture
“Apple CEO Steve Jobs now ranks No. 61 on the latest Forbes 400 list of wealthiest people in America. Every member of the ranks has a net worth of at least $1.3 billion. Although Jobs fell slightly from his No. 56 spot last year, he has gained significantly since 2006 where he sat at No. 132.” [Link]
“One new Microsoft commercial even begins with a company engineer who resembles John Hodgman, the comedian portraying the loser PC character in the Apple campaign. ‘Hello, I’m a PC,’ the engineer says, echoing Mr. Hodgman’s recurring line, ‘and I’ve been made into a stereotype.’” [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]
“Both WIRED and Gawker reported that members claiming to be with a group known as Anonymous took credit for hacking into Palin’s account. Screen grabs were published on other Web sites and then deleted, Gawker reported. The hacking took place on a Yahoo e-mail account Palin uses — separate from another private account that was publicized in The Washington Post last week.” [Link]
Blackberry Pearl Flip Phone picture
“Research in Motion Ltd., the maker of BlackBerry phones, is set to reveal Wednesday a phone that folds in half, a departure from the slab-like design that has defined its products. The long-rumored phone will be called the BlackBerry Pearl Flip, and will be available from T-Mobile USA and with overseas carriers later this year, at an undisclosed price.” [Link]
New iPod Nano
Apple demos a new, slimmer iPod nano
NBC Chuck Cast picture
In press conference, Steve Jobs announces that NBC programs will be returning to iTunes with version 8.0 of the software…
“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]
“Hewlett-Packard says it has achieved a mobile-computing milestone by getting the HP EliteBook 6930p to operate continuously for 24 hours on a single battery charge. The laptop used in the test is, however, rather different from those consumers would pick up at the store, at least for now. The machine’s equipped with high-end components including Intel solid-state hard drives (SSDs), a mercury-free LED display, and an optional ultra-capacity battery.” [Link]
“China’s Godson-3 chip is ambitious if anything. It proposes to be everything a world-class processor should be–and then some. Developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, it also has a larger goal: microprocessor independence for China. ‘Their motivation is pretty clear. They don’t want to be totally dependent on the outside world for something as important as microprocessors,’ said Tom Halfhill, an analyst at In-Stat. ” [Link]
HP Pavilion DV6910US 15.4-inch Laptop