• Apple Tablet, Publishers Not Included?
    What's this?! Could Apple's yet-to-be-announced tablet device entirely overlook the written word -- be it in newspaper, magazine, or book form -- for video? During a private get-together this week, top Apple execs had only good things to say about video, which they expect to be the next "exploding" opportunity, despite existing hurdles like industry rights issues, competing subsidies, developing the right consumer "offer," and so forth. Talk of the online book and newspaper market, meanwhile, appears to have left them limp, "given unattractive industry structure," according to those in attendance. "Sounds like they expect an Apple tablet -- should …
  • "Pow!" Marvel Comics Hit The iPhone
    The makers of three apps -- Comics by Comixology, iVerse and Panelfly -- have brought one of the "big two" comics publishers to the iPhone. Effective immediately, several comics from Marvel Comics will be available for purchase via in-app purchase from the free Comics app. The Marvel comics available initially from Comixology are Joss Whedon's 24-issue run on Astonishing X-Men, Robert Kirkman's five-issue Marvel Zombies miniseries, Ed Brubaker's first 30 issues of Captain America, and two other X-Men-related books, X-23 and X-Men: Age of Apocalypse, each six issues long. Each individual issue is priced at $2 on Comics and iVerse, …
  • Web Addresses Going Global
    The body in charge of assigning the world's Web users their online addresses has agreed to allow the use of any of the world's scripts, no longer just the Latin alphabet. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which approved the change at a meeting in Seoul, said in a statement it could lead to a dramatic rise in the number of Internet users. "This is only the first step, but it is an incredibly big one and an historic move toward the internationalization of the Internet," said ICANN's President and CEO Rod Beckstrom. "We have just made the …
  • The Man Who Shined Apple
    The man who helped put Apple, and by extension computers, on the map -- along with Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne -- is moving on to the next phase of his career. Lee Clow -- responsible for Apple's iconic "1984" ad, its Think Different campaign, and more recently iPod's dancing silhouettes, and "Mac vs. PC" guys -- is stepping down as the chief creative officer of TBWA/Media Arts Lab. Clow is expected to stay on as chairman and global director of Media Arts Lab, which handles all of Apple's creative duties, and as chief creative of the TBWA …
  • Hopeful Yahoo Eyes New HQ
    This makes The New York Times' decision to build a 50-story skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan looks prudent. In the next few years, ailing Web portal Yahoo wants to build a massive new campus in Santa Clara, California. At 42.5 acres, the 13 building campus would add 2.9 million square feet to Yahoo's office space -- enough for about 7,000 more employees. Google's Mountain View campus has about 3 million square feet of office space. At a city council meeting this summer, a Yahoo VP said the plan was for Yahoo to occupy the new buildings in Santa Clara for at …
  • Facebook Dethrones Spamking
    In lieu of a more traditional monetization model, Facebook might consider some legal work. The top social network was just awarded $711.2 million in damages after winning a case against Sanford Wallace -- a.k.a. "Spamford," a.k.a. "The Spam King" -- who sent mail and made posts without the permission of Facebook's users. "If Facebook could collect, this type of lawsuit would still be a really big money maker for the company," surmises paidContent. This marks the second time Facebook's won a big judgment against a spammer. Last November, a judge awarded the …
  • Google Music Search Leans Legal
    As expected, Google has launched a new music search feature that incorporates streaming audio previews when users search for artists, albums, or songs. It also includes a music discovery component from services like Pandora, Rhapsody, and Imeem. Officially named Google's "music search feature," it's designed to help expose people to legitimate Internet music outlets, which will help those companies compete with free -- and, in many cases, unauthorized -- sources of music online. To date, Google has been widely criticized by music labels and online music stores for at least seeming indifferent to the legality of a given music file. …
  • Is Verizon's Droid an iPhone Killer?
    So, is Verizon's new Droid phone -- supported by Google's new Android 2.0 mobile operating system -- a true iPhone slayer? The Technologizer's Harry McCracken says he's too smart to assume that specs alone are not enough to take down Apple's mobile juggernaut, "but the Droid does pack better specs than the iPhone 3GS in many areas -- including its screen, which has well over twice as many pixels ... and it's on a network that doesn't provoke much in the way of squawking from its customers." He's even gone to the trouble of laying out each phone's long list …
  • Facebook, A Work In Progress
    What's next for the most popular social network in history? Facebook just published a developer roadmap outlining some key upcoming changes, along with a general timeline of their rollout. Changes include developer access to user emails, more prominent app displays on user profiles, all-new homepage dashboards for apps and games, and improvements to Open Graph and Analytics APIs. Facebook Connect libraries, meanwhile, will be "smaller, clearer, and faster," and app policies and principles will be streamlined and uniformly enforced. "These updates are designed to simplify communication for users and developers, improve app discovery and engagement, and provide you with more …
  • Scoble: Twitter Trumps Google Reader
    Google Reader has at least one detractor in blogger and ex-Microsoft employee Robert Scoble. Scoble, who says he used to be Google's Reader's "biggest user" -- literally, he claims the Google Reader team told him once that he shared more items than anyone else -- has all but given up the service for Twitter. Why? It's "FREAKING SLOW"; its user interface is "too confusing"; it makes him feel guilty ("I have 1,000 unread items. Twitter doesn't tell me that."); the social network features "suck"; news appears faster on Twitter; headline scanning is easier, "and more interesting for some reason" in …
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