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There you are, rocking out to your favorite rock song, drumming your fingers to the guitar riff… or maybe you are 30 minutes into an important phone call, the other person waiting for your reply…  or you’re working away on your laptop, caught up in the middle of something urgent. You’re doing something important. That’s always when it happens. The batteries die.   In the blink of an eye a digital nightmare begins.  It takes just a blip of a second but in that time unsaved work is lost.  Calls are missed.  Songs interrupted.   It’s something that’s happened to us all, a consequence of our digitally connected era.  And it is something inventors and engineers have yet to find a solution for.  But they are trying.

In Apple’s Cupertino research labs, one idea being explored is small scale solar.  In fact, according to reports on the Macrumors website Apple has even filed a patent that aims to harness solar power to fuel future generations of portable devices (iPods, iPhones, Macbook’s etc).

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From futuristic “Cloud Computing”, to search, from advertising to applications, Microsoft and Google have been battling each other for greater share of Internet audiences and eyeballs for a few years now.  By last June, digitally indexing books looked set to be another one of the fronts in which the companies would face off.   What a difference a year makes.  This week, Microsoft quietly discontinued their Live Book Search project.

In a blog post on May 23rd, Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s VP of Search, Portal and Advertising, made the disclosure. Click to Read More

When the phrase “live entertainment” is used in a word association game, most people aren’t likely to jump up and down screaming rebroadcast or replay.  The phrase also isn’t likely to conjure thoughts of a big screen unless one is part of the staging.   For most people, “Live Entertainment” is, well, … live. It’s the energy of a packed house, the buzz of the crowd.  It’s Broadway.  It’s concert halls and small clubs.  It’s the spectacle of a show revealed second by second. Sony is hoping in the right settings, with the right context, that “live factor” won’t be so important; that replays will catch on.  

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In a year where gaming companies seem to be shattering records at every turn, another stellar result no longer comes as a surprise but is instead, an expectation.  French game publisher Ubisoft didn’t disappoint Thursday.  Even after upping expectations several times in the past year (most recently in March) the company reported fiscal yearend earnings that raised the bar even higher.

By the numbers: Click to Read More

Where there is smoke there is usually fire.  A similar maxim is often true with investors: where one big name goes, others usually follow.  It’s something of a law of opportunity, an investor piggy-back clause.  People follow success and will ride its coattails. So where Warren Buffet invests, others follow. Where Icahn goes, others go too.  With Yahoo the bulls eye in Icahn’s game du jour, that’s not good news for the company’s management.

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When Wired magazine came on the scene it was the essence of Geek Chic.  It was business news for the up and comer, forward looking journalism for the techno Internet industrialists.   Founded in 1993, the magazine was quick to draw raves, winning industry awards for design and general excellence.  It set a standard for innovation and vision.  Then the Internet bubble burst.  Along with it, the audience of need-to-know-know news hungry entrepreneurs shrank.   Advertisers had less interest to spend.  To survive, Wired evolved and sought new readers.  While peers like Industry Standard and Business 2.0 stayed their courses and shuttered, Wired became more mainstream, broader.  With a wider, more diverse audience, the property survived the crash, even weathered through complex ownership  issues (Wired.com and Wired magazine shared content but had different owners from 1998 to 2006).  Along the way, however, Wired lost some of its “Silicon Street” credibility.

Over the past two years, Advance.net, Wired’s owner, has moved to restore some of that digital cache. Click to Read More

The debut of Grand Theft Auto IV was one of those rare releases guaranteed to influence sales results; not that the gaming industry needs any help these days.  And even with a late in the month debut, even with just a few days to wield influence, that’s exactly what GTA IV did.   NPD North American retail numbers were released this week.  As has become common, the results were strong.

In total, April saw $1.23b in retail sales, up from $836.6m last year, a 47 percent increase.   Month to month, things were a little more measured:  April sales showed some seasonal slowdown compared to March.  The effect of Easter falling early also likely had some influence.   Still, year over year, impressive trends are continue.  Year to date, the industry is tracking 31% ahead of last year’s record setting pace. 

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