Facebook to sell shares for $38 a pop
Update: The Wall Street Journal hit the nail on the head: Facebook announced that its Friday IPO will include 421,233,615 shares (180 million from Facebook, 241 million from existing stockholders) sold at a price of $38 per share. Investors hoping to get a piece of Facebook when it makes its IPO tomorrow will have to ...
Early Facebook investors seemingly lack confidence, plan to sell off large percentage of holdings
The Wall Street Journal reports that early Facebook investors Peter Theil and Accel Partners intend to sell a large portion of their shares during the social network’s Friday IPO. Theil, for example, reportedly plans to unload as much as 50 percent of his stake in the company. According to the WSJ, with initial backers of ...
Comprehensive study proves BitTorrent helps album sales
The recording industry ought to reconsider its stance on BitTorrent, according to economist Robert Hammond, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University. From May 2010 to January 2011, Hammond studied the effect BitTorrent had on 1,095 albums that were leaked ahead of their official release dates, and what he found flew in the face ...
The Tech Block podcast 5.11.12
In this week’s podcast, Abdel, Jon, and Paul weigh in on the HTC One X, rumors of a 7-inch iPad, and Microsoft’s latest version of Bing. Show notes: HTC One X review HTC One X browser comparison to Safari 7-inch iPad with Retina display coming in October for $200 – $250, sources say Microsoft reinvents ...
HTC One X review
HTC hasn’t had a good year. Once the biggest draw on Android, a position it held through the end of 2011, the company has since given up its lead to rival Samsung, and that’s not even hardest bit to swallow. HTC, currently the target of a Nokia lawsuit, saw its net profit drop 70 percent ...
The Tech Block podcast 5.4.12
In this week’s podcast, Abdel, Jon, and Paul discuss Kindle sales, Facebook’s IPO, the new Samsung Galaxy S III, and RIM’s new Blackberry 10 smartphone. Show notes: IDC: Kindle Fire shipments plummet over last quarter, iPad grabs more market share Wall Street Journal: Facebook IPO pricing and valuation Samsung Galaxy S III revealed: 4.8-inch 720p ...
Yahoo CEO’s resume boasts degree he never earned, Yahoo calls the fib an ‘inadvertent error’
If it weren’t for multiple voices of reason who told me my fibs would eventually catch up to me, I’m sure I would have invented half the bullets on my resume. Not that I would have gone overboard and claimed a background in space exploration or public office, but I probably would have stretched the ...
The Tech Block podcast 4.27.12
In this week’s podcast, Abdel, Jon, and special guest Paul discuss Apple’s earnings, Google Drive, and how Nintendo could recover from its first-ever annual loss. Show notes: Apple earnings Nintendo reports first ever annual loss Google Drive debuts, replaces Docs Google Oracle trial: OS looked different, Google hoped for ⅓ marketshare in tablets by now ...
The definitive Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight review roundup
As far as eReaders have come, with improvements in cost, size, and battery life, they’re hamstrung by a glaring shortcoming: They’re not glaring at all. eReaders, you see, don’t include on-board light sources, forcing their users to seek lamps or clip-on lights in dim conditions. Or at least that used to be the case. Barnes ...
The Tech Block podcast 4.20.12
We’re back! That’s right, folks, after a few weeks away, we’re back on the air again. This week, Abdel, Jon and special guest Paul discuss Canon’s 5D Mark III, the Lumia 900 launch, and thoughts on market traction for Microsoft. Show notes: NYC as seen through Canon’s 5D Mark III Nokia sales down $4B year-over-year ...
NYC seen through Canon’s 5D Mark III
A photographer never goes anywhere interesting without his camera, so when I recently traveled to New York City, you can bet I brought along my best hardware. In this case, it was Canon’s new 5D Mark III, a 22.3-megapixel beast that shoots at 6fps and captures images with a 35mm full-frame sensor. The latter was ...
Why on earth is Google picking up Motorola?
As Google prepares to swallow Motorola Mobility in a $12.5 billion deal, the company’s priciest acquisition to date, The Wall Street Journal’s Dennis Berman has a fair question for the search giant, and surprisingly, it’s one seemingly no one else is asking: What are you thinking? When the news first broke that Google planned to ...
As exec after exec jumps ship, we wonder: Will 2012 be the year the world ends for Yahoo?
Yahoo, once a nearly incomparable star in the dot-com universe, is going supernova, and at this rate, its demise might be measured in months, not light-years. Yesterday, a day after Yahoo announced that it will lay off 2,000 workers in a desperate bid to streamline and cut costs, it was revealed that the Internet Pioneer ...
What's up in tech:
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Hewlett-Packard could cut as many as 25,000 jobs
May 17, 2012
Bloomberg reports that Hewlett-Packard is mulling shedding 8 percent of its workforce, or as many as 25,000 jobs. The layoffs, which the computer maker is reportedly considering in the face of dismal hardware sales, would affect the company’s enterprise services group deepest. Brian Marshall, an ISI Group analyst, estimated that HP could save $1.2 billion and boost its annual per-share earnings by 50 cents if it cut 18,000 jobs. If HP were to move ahead with the rumored mass layoff, it would be the latest in a string of cost-saving maneuvers made by the Palo Alto-based company. In March HP announced that it would fuse its printing and PC divisions. Source: Bloomberg Be Sociable, Share! Tweet
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Facebook to sell shares for $38 a pop
May 17, 2012
Update: The Wall Street Journal hit the nail on the head: Facebook announced that its Friday IPO will include 421,233,615 shares (180 million from Facebook, 241 million from existing stockholders) sold at a price of $38 per share. Investors hoping to get a piece of Facebook when it makes its IPO tomorrow will have to spend a minimum of $38, and the price could climb even higher, according to The Wall Street Journal. At nearly $40 a share, Facebook would be worth a record $104 billion, more than any other American company at the time of its IPO. The social network would also rake in $18.4 billion, making its debut the second largest in American history behind Visa Inc., which ...
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ex-Anonymous member takes credit for DDoS attack against The Pirate Bay
May 17, 2012
Despite suspicions to the contrary, Anonymous wasn’t behind The Pirate Bay’s prolonged outage. Rather, an Anonymous deserter has taken credit for the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) that crippled the world’s most popular file-sharing site for several days. Twitter user AnonNyre revealed his role in a series of colorful tweets: The Pirate Bay, I am so f****** pissed, WHY THERE IS NO ANAL PORN IN HERE. F*** YOU PIRATE BAY F*** that shit, N**** Bay. But The Pirate Bay’s lack of porn wasn’t what motivated the self-proclaimed “security killer,” nor was the file-sharing site even his primary target. Instead, AnonNyre intended to inconvenience Anonymous by taking down what he said is the group’s “main press release point.” Tango Down – ...
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Twitter embraces ‘Do Not Track’ feature, stands up for user privacy
May 17, 2012
With Facebook’s IPO now just a day away, Twitter could be forgiven for following the social network’s lead and cashing in on its users’ data. After all, for all the bad press Facebook’s received for its habit of mining users’ personal data, it also received a fat, nearly $100 billion valuation. But Twitter, a company that made headlines earlier this month when it went to court to protect the privacy of one of its users, is not Facebook, a fact made clear by its users-first mentality. To that end, Ed Felten, the FTC’s chief technology officer, announced today that Twitter will embrace Mozilla’s “Do Not track” feature, which, when enabled, will prevent Twitter from collecting a user’s data. That’s assuming, ...
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Senators draw up Ex-Patriot Act in response to Facebook co-founder Saverin’s blatant tax-dodging
May 17, 2012
Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin might have cut ties with the U.S. to escape unwanted attention from the government, but try as he might, he hasn’t avoided the scrutiny of New York Senator Chuck Schumer. The Democrat criticized the Brazilian-born Saverin today for renouncing his U.S. citizenship ahead of Facebook’s IPO, a move presumably designed to spare Saverin as much as $67 million in capital-gains taxes he’d otherwise be liable for. Saverin stands to make an estimated $4 billion from his 4 percent stake in the social network. But Schumer has more than harsh words for Saverin. Together with Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, Schumer will introduce the Ex-PATRIOT (Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy) Act. Under the new ...
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Comprehensive study proves BitTorrent helps album sales
May 17, 2012
The recording industry ought to reconsider its stance on BitTorrent, according to economist Robert Hammond, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University. From May 2010 to January 2011, Hammond studied the effect BitTorrent had on 1,095 albums that were leaked ahead of their official release dates, and what he found flew in the face of popular belief: Online piracy actually benefited the 1,075 artists he studied. I isolate the causal effect of file sharing of an album on its sales by exploiting exogenous variation in how widely available the album was prior to its official release date. The findings suggest that file sharing of an album benefits its sales. I don’t find any evident of a negative effect in ...
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Early Facebook investors seemingly lack confidence, plan to sell off large percentage of holdings
May 17, 2012
The Wall Street Journal reports that early Facebook investors Peter Theil and Accel Partners intend to sell a large portion of their shares during the social network’s Friday IPO. Theil, for example, reportedly plans to unload as much as 50 percent of his stake in the company. According to the WSJ, with initial backers of Facebook so eager to sell off such large chunks of their holdings, would-be investors ought to take notice. After all, they could be walking away out of fear that the company’s IPO price won’t improve anytime soon. Source: WSJ Be Sociable, Share! Tweet
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Microsoft offering streamlined ‘Signature’ PCs that dispense with bloatware
May 16, 2012
Like Google, Microsoft is tired of hardware makers mucking up its software and sullying its reputation. Windows, the company feels, is too often bogged down by needless software installed by self-promoting PC makers that care more about advancing their own brands than they do advancing the platform. And like Google, Microsoft is determined to show ‘em how it’s done before its name is completely covered in mud. To that end, for $99, Microsoft will streamline users’ Windows 7 PCs at its 16 retail stores. Specifically, Microsoft employees will remove unnecessary software from users’ machines, leaving only the computers’ bare Windows bones and whatever users can’t bear to part with. The end results, called Signature PCs, are said to be cleaner ...
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Verizon to put an end to its unlimited-data plan
May 16, 2012
As more and more subscribers embrace LTE, Fierce Wireless reports that Verizon plans to phase out its unlimited data plan, first introduced when the company peddled only 3G data. According to the report, the nation’s largest carrier will soon force both existing and new subscribers to sign up for a “data share plan,” which Verizon aims to launch this summer. As these 3G unlimited data plan customers migrate to 4G LTE, they will have to purchase the company’s data-share plan (which Verizon plans to launch in mid-summer) and move off the $30 per month unlimited data plan. “Everyone will be on data share.” said Fran Shammo. It’s well known that Verizon frequently throttles unlimited-data subscribers, but despite having to deal ...
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Unknown group brings The Pirate Bay to its knees with DDoS attack
May 16, 2012
It’s no surprise that The Pirate Bay is under fire again. It’s always under fire. Over its eight-year history, the most popular file-sharing site in the business has irked governments and multi-billion-dollar companies alike, but despite repeated attempts at dismantling the site, including a British ban, the self-proclaimed “most resilient BitTorrent site in the galaxy” has endured. But something’s different about the latest assault. It has succeeded. For the past 24 hours, The Pirate Bay has been mostly inaccessible. The culprit? Neither the British High Court nor some disgruntled Hollywood studio. Rather, The Pirate Bay has been brought to its knees by a sustained DDoS attack perpetrated by an unidentified group. Ironically, just last week, a similar attack was carried ...
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DigiTimes still holds sway over investors, contributes to $10B loss for Samsung
May 16, 2012
With an unenviable reputation tarnished by baseless rumors and shoddy reporting, Taiwan’s DigiTimes is regarded as something of a joke by most tech journalists. But not everyone thinks the infamous news outlet is full of crap, and Samsung learned the hard way Wednesday that despite DigiTimes’ plummeting credibility, the stories it spins can still prove extremely costly. Today, after DigiTimes claimed Apple ordered a massive shipment of DRAM chips from Elpida instead of Samsung, its usual chip supplier, investors were so spooked that they unloaded $10 billion worth of Samsung stock. All told, the world’s leading smartphone maker suffered a 6 percent hit, the company’s biggest daily decline in almost four years. Hyundai Securities analyst Rhoo Yong-suk said DigiTimes’ story ...
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Locked up abroad: HTC One X and Evo 4G LTE held in U.S. Customs over patent dispute
May 16, 2012
HTC’s One X and Evo 4G LTE smartphones have been described as the ailing device maker’s saviors, but they won’t be saving much of anything from U.S. Customs, where they’re being held as the agency examines them for possible patent issues. To make a long story short(er), Apple was awarded an exclusion order against the importation of HTC Android devices at the International Trade Commission last December. In particular, Apple objected to Android’s messaging app, which it said infringed on a patent covering the conversion of phone numbers and email addresses into actionable links that open a menu of options. The ban was pushed back to April 19 to give HTC time to sort out what it claimed was a ...
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Video: How CCD sensors work on digital cameras
May 16, 2012
If you’re into photography, you might know that digital-camera sensors come in two varieties –– charge-coupled device (CCD) and complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS). What you might not know, though, is exactly how they work. If you don’t, and assuming you’re interested, Engineer Guy‘s Bill Hammack offers a refreshingly simple explanation of how CCD sensors capture and store your photographs. Take a look. Be Sociable, Share! Tweet
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WSJ: iPhone 5′s display to measure ‘at least 4 inches’
May 16, 2012
Throughout the five-year life of Apple’s iPhone, and despite multiple upgrades in that span, the handset’s display hasn’t budged from its original 3.5-inch size. But that’ll change when the iPhone 5 arrives, according to the Wall Street Journal. Sources in Apple’s supply chain told the WSJ Wednesday that with the next-gen iPhone’s expected drop date now just five months away, production of its displays, “which measure at least 4 inches,” will begin next month. Sharp, LG Display, and Japan Display Inc. have been tapped to make the screens. Source: WSJ Be Sociable, Share! Tweet
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‘Social Network’ screenwriter Aaron Sorkin to pen Sony’s Steve Jobs biopic
May 16, 2012
Variety reports that Sony has hired Academy Award-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin to pen the screenplay for the upcoming Steve Jobs biopic, which will star Ashton Kutcher. According to the report, Sony’s biopic will reference Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs. Sorkin collected an Oscar for his work on “The Social Network”, which profiled Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg. Sony praised Sorkin in a statement, saying his unique talents are perfectly suited to Jobs’s story. Steve Jobs’ story is unique: He was one of the most revolutionary and influential men not just of our time, but of all time. There is no writer working in Hollywood today who is more capable of capturing such an extraordinary life for the screen than ...