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Microsoft Goes After Yahoo
October 14, 2011 by admin
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Just three years after a failed attempt to acquire Yahoo, Microsoft may be considering whether to give it another shot, Reuters reported today.
According to the report, Microsoft executives are split on whether the company should bid for Yahoo. A final decision has not been reached, the report noted.
Citing an unnamed “high-ranking Microsoft executive,” the report said Microsoft is evaluating whether to pull in a partner for a joint effort to buy Yahoo.
Microsoft said it doesn’t comment on rumors or speculation. Yahoo didn’t respond to a request for comment on the report.
“As long as Microsoft is committed to growing its online presence, this makes sense,” said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research. “Yahoo has a large number of subscribers and regular visitors, many of whom are not considering going elsewhere. And that would be a good boost for Microsoft.”
He also noted that Yahoo Mail, Yahoo’s popular free email service, would combine well with Microsoft’s own Hotmail service to create a very large base of email users.
In 2008, Microsoft tried to acquire Yahoo. Yahoo’s argument that the bid was tool low prompted Microsoft to finally give up.
Since then, Yahoo has been dealing with some significant problems.
No longer the high-flying Internet pioneer of its heyday, Yahoo last month fired Carol Bartz, who had joined the company as CEO with high hopes that she could return the company to its past glory.
Once Bartz was out the door, industry analysts began speculating that Yahoo’s board might be open to a solid acquisition offer.
Twitter Security Lagging,Says Experts
July 13, 2011 by admin
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The fast-growing microblogging site Twitter is lagging behind some other Internet services in using methods to help secure the accounts of users, security experts say.
Weaknesses in Twitter’s security became apparent on the U.S. July 4 Independence holiday as a still unidentified hacker took control of a Fox News Twitter account and tweeted falsely claiming that U.S. President Barack Obama was dead.
While the hijacking of Twitter accounts is not new, the false Tweets about Obama generated headlines around the world.
The Secret Service is investigating the matter. Fox News has said does not know how the attacker gained control of its account, but complained that it took Twitter more than five hours to return control of the account to Fox.
“What Twitter needs to do now is to commit to a thorough review of their security practices,” said Daniel Diermeier, a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. “For Twitter this is a very serious problem.”
Security experts said the attack might have been prevented if Twitter had offered two-factor authentication technology to secure its accounts.
AOL Launches Professional Division
May 19, 2011 by admin
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AOL Inc is launching a professional division called AOL Industry on Monday geared towards capturing the government, energy and defense executives attention.
The idea is to bring the use of social media, video and design from consumer-oriented sites and apply it to media for business professionals.
“(Trade media) hasn’t done as good a job at innovating as consumer media,” said Jay Kirsch, vice president and general manager of AOL Industry, who pitched the idea to AOL at the end of last summer.
“If you look at most of the innovations that have really changed media most of them have been consumer facing and not business-to-business.”
AOL Energy rolled out first and will be followed by AOL Government and AOL Defense in June. AOL Industry is not charging a subscription for access and will not have a print component.
2GHz Smartphones On The Horizon
April 19, 2011 by admin
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According to Asian sources, Samsung is apparently developing an ARM based 2GHz dual-core processor. The smartphone is expected to be the first on the market next year about of the Samsung’s Exynos line.
Apparently, this news was leaked from an executive at Samsung who also said the company intends to offer the new processors on its competitors to put on their smartphones and tablets. Samsung is also claiming that the processor will offer PC performance. Our question is what will the performance be based upon?
Terror Alerts To Be Issued Via Facebook, Twitter
April 10, 2011 by admin
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The U.S. government may start issuing terror alerts via Facebook and Twitter, according to a news service report.
The Associated Press reported Thursday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is working to re-design the current color-coded terror alert system. The new system, according to the report, would have only two levels of alerts — elevated and imminent.
Those alerts would be conveyed out to the public in part via social networking sites Facebook and Twitter . The AP article is based on a 19-page draft of the plan that the news service obtained.
“The new terror alerts would also be published online using Facebook and Twitter ‘when appropriate,’” the news agency reported, “but only after federal, state and local government leaders have already been notified.”
The new system is expected to be in place by April 27.
Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at Yankee Group Research, said the fact that the U.S. government is entrusting something as critical as terrorist alerts to Facebook and Twitter shows how important social networking sites have become to people’s lives.
Software Issues Plague ARM Servers
PC World is reporting software issues are hurting the ARM Processors and may inhibit it from being a serious contender to x86 Processors. Dell Computer started testing some of the processors in low-end servers to appease some of their larger clients. It appears that these companies were interested in the low power and density in data centers.
Dell’s General Manager of Server Platforms stated “he had major concerns about the weak software ecosystem surrounding ARM. He said that there are lots of advantages from the architecture even if it means porting your code over to that new instruction set and maintaining two different software stacks. But he said that there are time and cost issues associated with porting software from x86 to ARM.” Read More….
Hackers Go After WordPress
March 6, 2011 by admin
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We found out Bloggers using the WordPress platform was shutdown by a DDos attack yesterday that apparently affected many blog sites.The DDos hostilities began in the morning and lasted for a couple of hours. The estimates on the DDos attack was thought to be “multiple Gigabits per second and tens of millions of packets per second”, according to sources, WordPress is working with their providers to prevent such acts from ever taking place again.WordPress the attack is over, though in Chicago, Dallas and San Antonio. The good news is that the site is back up. However, while the attack was in progress sources say it was on of the “largest” the organization has ever seen. Even centersThe attack unfortunately hit main three data. Read More…..
Intel MeeGO Tablets Expected In June
February 1, 2011 by admin
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Intel announced that it intends to launch tablets based on the tablet version of MeeGo 1.2 in June 2011.
It is understood that most of them will launch final hardware in Q3 2011. The tablet preview program has already started and some developers are submitting applications as we speak. Intel’s App Up center for tablet should also be ready in Q3 2011.
With the big launch slated for Q3 2011 we are sure that Intel can have some designs ready for a hardware launch rather than a paper event. Intel’s tablet strategy also relies on Windows 7 as well as on Gingerbread and Honeycomb, whatever can help the golden goal of selling more Atoms. ……Read more