Tatum and Denim blog

Charlie says that "the whole idea that you have a main site is dead". I couldn't agree more - I strongly believe that platforms are the future of the Internet.

One clarification I'd like to make in this whole discussion is Facebook is both a destination and a platform. It's important to understand that these are discrete things - something can be a platform without being a destination and vice versa. Clearly, Facebook offers a nice API for integrating your code into theirs, but this to me is not what makes Facebook a platform. MySpace, iGoogle, and a plethora of Web 2.0 portals allow you to "embed" your code - Facebook just allows you to do it more seamlessly. If anything, these are all simply platforms - or rather, vehicles - for traffic. Of course, as Charlie and myself and countless others have said, traffic does not give you a business model.

On the other hand, Facebook is getting flak for not being open enough with their data. As Fred says, being open in one way is not enough. Yes, the fact that Facebook does not (yet) allow Twitter to update your Facebook status is annoying, but as a platform, Facebook is important because it exposes the underlying relationship information to consumers of the API. This allows me to build an application that leverages this data without having to go out and collect it myself. While I appreciate being able to subscribe to my news feed in my newsreader, ultimately it's this social landscape already available in the API that is important.

This is precisely why Facebook is appealing to us as a platform and something we consider a key element in our launch strategy. As Charlie puts it, "at the end of the day, you shouldn't care where the user winds up… everyone can access your content or your service in a form native to the platform that its on, but will the full functionality of whatever you're up to." Facebook gives us a natural place for our users to wind up - both because of the potential traffic and the data it exposes - but ultimately we recognize that it is but one of many destinations.

Along these lines, it's why new social networks like Plaxo Pulse leave me scratching my head. Plaxo already knows who your friends are - the fact that it asks me to add a friend on its site that it knows I'm already a friend with is just ridiculous. Despite already leveraging the social networking data exposed via Facebook and others, Plaxo is trying to reinvent the social networking wheel.

I'd also reiterate the point Charlie makes about dogfooding. We built our site on top of the API so we can ensure that the API properly captures all of the functionality we want available in the API. If you're not able to build your site with your API, then your API is not an actual API.

Filed under: Laptops, Peripherals, Wearables

You won’t find any kvetching going on at Engadget HQ when it comes to new lines of fanciful gizmo adornments, but forcing us to enter Best Buy in order to pick something up may elicit a few scrunched-up noses. Nevertheless, the infamous big box retailer is apparently hoping to snag a few more holiday dollars from ladies (and their gift-buying SOs) by asking Liz Claiborne to design a “collection of electronics accessories for women.” The Liz Claiborne Accessories line will reportedly include “laptop bags, protective sleeves, business totes, and cases for cellphones, music players, and cameras.” Price wise, you’ll be looking at around $25 to $200 depending on what you pick up, and you can drop in to scope things out at nearly 250 Best Buy locations beginning in October.

UPDATE: Seems like some readers have seen this stuff in Best Buy locales already, so give your local one a call if you’re desperate to know.

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Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Just in case you had any suspicion that Google may retract its interest in bidding for the 700MHz spectrum after the rules neglected to afford the winner wholesaling rights, Chris Sacca has intervened to clear things up. According to the search giant’s head of special initiatives, the firm is “still very interested in the auction” despite not getting all of the rules for the spectrum sale set in its favor. Of course, the FCC did choose to approve the whole “open access” bit, and while Mr. Sacca declined to elaborate in order to keep details of Google’s strategy on the DL, it seems safe to say that it will indeed be busting out the checkbook come auction time.

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Looks like Lenovo won’t be the one to get left behind in the pursuit of the “poor rural Chinese market,” as the firm has just announced a basic PC that it plans to sell in that neck of the woods for between $199 and $399. While there are currently “no details” with respect to processor choices or other internal hardware specifications, we do know the unit will “include a keyboard and use a buyer’s television set as a monitor.” Interestingly, Lenovo actually went so far as to deny assumptions that it was merely “responding to Dell’s initiative,” and noted that it had been selling low-cost PCs to “rural Chinese families since 2004.” Of note, there was no mention of which operating system would be running the show, but considering that Microsoft just halved the retail price of Vista over in China, you just may see it vying for selection.

Read - Lenovo to sell $199 PC in rural China
Read - Microsoft halves Vista retail price in China

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Filed under: Storage

Samsung, the worldwide leader in flash memory production, has been forced to “shut down six of its chip production lines after a power outage occurred at a plant near Seoul,” and while recent reports suggest that “operations should be restored within a day,” the lasting effects could linger on for quite some time. Reportedly, the outage occurred at Samsung’s Giheung complex and disrupted production of flash memory, DRAM, and logic chips, and while this may not sound too significant to the average outsider, estimates are already pegging losses at around $54 billion. Notably, Samsung wouldn’t say whether or not the hiccup will affect supplies of memory chips to Apple (one of its top customers), but analysts are already purporting that we could see “a severe shortage of NAND chips” and increased prices in the coming weeks.

[Thanks, Patrick M.]

Read - Samsung Electronics chip output hit by power cut
Read - Samsung operations should be restored within a day

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ConnectU is suing Facebook for, among other things, copyright infringement, breach of contract, theft of trade secret. (It should be noted that Facebook is counter-suing for business torts and unfair business practices).

ConnectU (which started at Harvard Connection) alleges that Mark Zuckerberg was brought on as a member of the ConnectU development team, given access to the existing code base and business plans, and eventually "stole" them. For more details, read the full set of complaints and other filings.

Rob is wondering why no one is covering this lawsuit… it's certainly a big deal given the recent valuations and talk of an IPO. As Mike Arrington notes, "this isn’t a case of plaintiffs looking for a quick buck as billion dollar valuations are discussed" - this is actually a long-standing dispute that commenced long before we were saying "Facebook" and "billions" in the same sentence.

Facebook recently acquired Parakey, a as-yet-launched "web operating system" started by Firefox co-founders. Rumor has it that Google was also in the bidding, but that Parakey was lured by pre-IPO stock. Maybe if they considered this lawsuit, or if Google stock wasn't already "overvalued", they would have considered the Google offer instead.

The Parakey acquisition is especially interesting in the wake of the Facebook platform's resounding success. Duncan Riley even suggested that Facebook might become the next Microsoft (and all the good and bad that comes along with that distinction). If nothing else, it definitely shows that they've come to realize how important being a - or rather, the - platform is. Or perhaps the acquisition is in part hedging their bets against the ConnectU lawsuit?

Either way, Facebook is certainly proving ambitious. If it succeeds, turning down $1 billion will be the best move Mark Zuckerberg ever made.

Filed under: Cellphones

We already figured AT&T made out like gangbusters considering just how many iPhones it moved as Q2 came to a close, but upping profits by 61-percent ain’t nothing to sneeze at. Moreover, the telco posted a $2.9 billion increase in net income and sales of $29.5 billion, and a key part of those figures came from the 146,000 iPhone activations. Notably, some 40-percent of those iPhone buyers were new to AT&T, which helped to slash customer turnover to a record low (that isn’t likely to be broken anytime soon). Still, these numbers didn’t turn out to impress Wall Street very much, as many apparently had even higher hopes for AT&T’s quarter, and Piper Jaffray & Co. analyst Gene Munster even went so far as to called the amount of iPhone activations “a disappointment.” Tough crowd, huh?

[Via mocoNews]

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AskTheVC recently addressed the question of what was the best state of incorporation. The short answer is one of 3 preferred states: "Delaware, whatever state the company is in and whatever state(s) the VCs are located in." Obviously, the last is hard to determine if you're going to incorporate before you close financing.

California is notoriously employee-friendly so it should be avoided. Some of those laws may still apply if you are based in California, but if you are elsewhere you should definitely assume those burdens.

New York is also undesirable. It's fairly balanced when it comes to dealing with owners vs. employees, but the one big red flag is Section 630 of the NYS BCL. This section states that the top 10 shareholders are liable for employee wages if the company goes out of business and employees aren't paid. This statute does not apply to foreign companies (i.e., those incorporated in other states) even if they're doing business in New York. Considering the largest shareholders are going to likely be the founders (you) and a VC, it probably makes sense to look elsewhere.

Delaware is the default for good reason.  As Jason said, "Delaware law is well-settled, generally business friendly and most lawyers in the U.S. are adapt at dealing with DE law."  The second point is perhaps the most important point initially, but it's the first point that makes you choose Delaware over another state that is as business friendly. Because Delaware has a well-established body of law, you're not going to pay to litigate those "basic" issues, where you might in a state like North Dakota which may have adopted business-friendly laws but doesn't have the precedent to draw upon.

The last point is important too, but it goes beyond lawyers being "adept" with Delaware law. After incorporation, when the company does any deal that requires legal opinion, part of the opinion will require the lawyer to validate corporate structure (i.e., "Due incorporation and valid existence"). If you're incorporated in New York or California or practically any other state, only a lawyer admitted to that state can make that opinion. If you're in Delaware, every lawyer can opine even if they're not admitted in Delaware.

If you ever want to go public, the bankers are pretty much going to require moving it there before the public offering anyway.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

While many have criticized Apple for (debatably) giving its handheld lineup more priority than the Mac, it looks like sales aren’t suffering because of it. Presumably due (at least in part) to the halo effect stirred by Apple’s marketing blitz of its iPhone and iPod, Apple’s US personal computer shipments for Q2 of this year landed them in a tie with the once mighty Gateway in terms of American market share. Granted, Gateway did have a few more shipments than Apple, but if Gateway continues to fade and Macs continue to move, we could see Cupertino raising up the bronze (outright) here soon. Attaboy Steve — just snag 18-percent more of the market and second place is all yours.

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Last week, Google (GOOG) purchased Postini for $625m. Jason calls this Google's most enterprisey acquisition yet - and despite all the other acquisitions, it's "the first evidence . . . that Google is ready to take the kid gloves off outside of the ad-driven model."

Cote says that $625 million is not flippant, and regardless of whether you consider this a move to "directly compete" with Microsoft (MSFT), it does mean (especially when considering other efforts like Google Gears) that "Google is a threat to Microsoft".

Fred, as an existing Postini customer, outlines what he'd like to see Google do with Postini. Fred focuses on mail because, let's be honest, that's what they're best known for. But as Jason suggested, I think the acquisition goes beyond this.

InfoWorld coverage of the acquisition outlines this broader application. 

Postini provides on-demand security, archiving, and policy enforcement services, primarily for e-mail and instant messaging systems, to about 35,000 business customers worldwide. Google will use the technology to boost the security and compliance features of Google Apps, its hosted suite of productivity software.

While Postini is best known for mail and IM security, as Postini executive Sundar Raghavan discussed in a recent interview, their offerings go beyond spam prevention and e-mail security.

Our policy management platform is flexible and extensible. I expect our product managers to work with Google's product managers to see how to apply this technology to documents and spreadsheets.

When Google launched Google Apps Premier Edition, I said the biggest issues were security and compliance concerns. This acquisition seems like the type that can be put to use to start to mitigate some of those concerns and show that Google is serious about security (which they don't necessarily have a good track record with).

If Google indeed uses the technology as the InfoWorld article and Sundar describe, it could be the first sign that Google is preparing to compete directly with Microsoft in the enterprise. And it certainly would qualify as Google's most "enterprisey" acquisition yet.

Filed under: Gaming

While Peter Moore wasn’t exactly this forthright when chatting it up with us, it’s not totally out of character for execs to lash out at rivals from time to time. In the latest chapter of CE-Oh no he didn’t, we find Mr. Moore claiming that Sony’s “long-term business plan of being successful in Japan is crumbling.” Moreover, he continued to knock the PS3 by sidestepping questions of why the Xbox 360 has sold so miserably in the Land of the Rising Sun and suggested that Sony was the one that should be worried about “getting outsold six-to-one.” As a finisher, Peter added that he had “built a business plan for Japan,” and while sales have indeed been lackluster, he claimed that “Sony was missing its plan by much more” than he was missing his. Seriously, them’s fightin’ words there.

[Via DailyTech]

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If you're raising capital for a technical startup, how much should you take? Marc Andreessen says as much as possible, a sentiment echoed by Jason Calacanis. Jeremy Liew expounded on some of the risks of having a valuation that's either too high or too low. Marc and Jason are two guys who definitely know about building successful companies (and, perhaps more importantly, successful exits).

Jeremy's example focused on an angel round that gave a company a valuation of $30m, where he most certainly would have valued the company less than that (and thus either passed on, or lost, the financing). Despite what Marc and Jason say, though, you can raise too much money in a given round - not because of subsequent rounds, but because of the expected exit. After all, as Jason says, if you raise "too much" money in an earlier round, the big challenge is just not too burn it too fast.

This applies especially to VC rounds, which are typically very standard as compared to an angel round. The "average" fund has a life span of 10 years - the first 2 may be spent primarily raising funds, while investments are made typically up to year 4. That means that most investments need to be liquid in 5-6 years. The important thing to remember is that VCs invest for capital appreciation, not income - they are not interested in a cash cow, but rather in something that will "blow up". A good general rule is that the VC is looking for a return that will double in value and be marketable within 3 years.

If you take $10 million in an A round (giving the "standard" 40% per round), your company is valued at $25 million at the time you raise the funds. That means that the VC is going to be looking for an exit within 6 years (preferably sooner) for at least $50 million. In many situations that might be fine - but there are also plenty of companies who might be very, very successful and profitable but not worth that much. Or, if they are valued accordingly, it still might undervalue what the company would be worth in the long run. (See, e.g., the number of Web 1.0 startups who bought back stock, etc. and eventually sold for significantly more than they would have been worth at the end of the VC window).

The real problem with raising "too much" money is that it creates certain expectations for an exit that might not be in the company's, or the founders', best interests.

(Edited to clarify a few points in the original post) 

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Shortly after months of bickering with Intel, Transmeta finally took its ungraceful bow out of the CPU business, but apparently AMD sees something within the company worth investing in. Yesterday, AMD announced that it would be investing $7.5 million in Transmeta in exchange for Transmeta preferred stock, a move that was eloquently dubbed “a strategic investment in the future of Transmeta.” Les Crudele, president and CEO of Transmeta, was quoted as saying that his firm looked forward to “continuing its collaboration with AMD on technology initiatives in the future,” and AMD returned the lip service favor by boasting about how vital Transmeta was in bringing its AMD64 technology to market. Aw, how touching.

[Via CNET]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Gaming

Considering that some retail locales in America are still having trouble keeping a fresh supply of Wii consoles in stock (whilst the PlayStation 3 units tend collect thin layers of dust), it’s no surprise to see such dramatic sales figures surface. Sure enough, Enterbrain’s latest report demonstrates that Nintendo’s darling moved into 270,974 new households in June, while only 41,628 PS3s were sold in the same timeframe; just to compare, the even older Xbox 360 was able to sell 17,616 units. That brings the overall sales figures to date for Nintendo to nearly 2.76 million, while Sony has yet to break the magical one million in units sold. But don’t count Sony out just yet — it’s coming back, remember?

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Storage

Western Digital has bought Komag, a company that supplies its buyer with thin-film media used to create disk drives, for $1 billion. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of the year, and has been completely approved by both boards, with just regulatory approvals needed to be cleared. The deal is overshadowed somewhat by the statement by one analyst that unusual trading in options ahead of the deal looked “suspicious,” which makes it hard for us to recall an example where stock trading in the time immediately surrounding a merger deal wasn’t suspicious.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Although some may argue that piracy is (at least on some level) beneficial, it looks like NBC has taken that sentiment to the opposing extreme with its latest comments. In a purported filing with the FCC calling for enhanced regulation of the internet in an attempt to stifle evil P2P activity, NBC blurted out a string of text that it surely hoped would be overlooked. Alas, hardly any ridiculous claims go unseen these days, so now we’re faced with this gem: “In the absence of movie piracy, video retailers would sell and rent more titles. Movie theaters would sell more tickets and popcorn. Corn growers would earn greater profits and buy more farm equipment.” There’s absolutely no need for us to pick apart the aforementioned quote, after all, we’re fairly certain the absurdity shines right through on its own.

[Via TechDirt, image courtesy of Monsanto]

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Charlie discusses the future of Twitter and touches on what I think are two key points: corporate twitter and content subscription.

The key as Charlie discusses is the opt-in and one-way nature of Twitter. That is, I only get updates from someone if I explicitly choose to receive them, and the party I subscribe to doesn’t necessarily need to listen to me.

That sure sounds a lot like an RSS aggregator, doesn’t it? To me, Twitter is exactly that: a messaging aggregator. The future of Twitter is a messaging platform.

Twitter has a number of ways to deliver updates - you can get them on your phone (via SMS), from IM, or on the web. And of course, you can get them as RSS and bring them anywhere you want. You can also send the updates from any of those mediums. Ever better, Twitter has an API for putting data in and getting messages out, which means I can update Twitter and have this “status update” sent out to Facebook, my blog, and so on.

Delivery based on context and priority

The key feature that would have to be added would be choosing how and when I want updates on an individual channel level. I may want to get updates from Charlie or Corey immediately because I’m more likely to meet up with them for dinner, but there are others I follow where I don’t need to be notified as immediately (e.g., they don’t live near me, but I’m interested in what they have to say). Today, I only have the option to turn on SMS notifications wholesale, not for individual channels. If Twitter is to become a messaging platform, this needs to change.

I’m envisioning something like a priority scale - I assign priorities to certain people and to certain devices. I always have my phone, so SMS is a surefire way to reach me. It’s also the most expensive way to reach me (both on my end and on Twitter’s end), so I don’t want every message to get me there. Accordingly, the bar for sending me messages on my phone is going to be relatively high (and a big reason I haven’t activated Twitter on my phone yet). Conversely, delivering something to my feed reader at home costs nothing, but is also less likely to reach me.

In the Enterprise

As Charlie discusses, the same problem exists in the enterprise. We have a number of ways to communicate with colleagues right now - e-mail, voicemail, IM, Blackberry push messages, personal phone and/or SMS in emergencies, and even post-it notes. Worse yet, regulated industries like investment banking and law firms may have retention requirements on all of those messages. Among other benefits, Twitter can offer retention out of the box and the ability to add new delivery mechanisms down the road with little risk.

We also build and maintain a lot of infrastructure and applications to deliver contextual information to our users. We deliver messages to the Blackberry, to desktop applications, to an Exchange mailbox, and to use within other internal applications. This infrastructure is effectively Twitter, though unfortunately is not nearly as centralized (yet - there’s an effort to do that).

Imagine if we could simply have our users subscribe to different channels and then choose where to receive those messages. A critical issue (a server’s down, or a stock price dropped more than 20%) might get delivered immediately to a phone, while something more mundane gets delivered to a feed reader. Obviously, this doesn’t sound that much different to Newsgator on the consumption side (Newsgator has tools that cover most of the others and SMS and IM can be added), but the big advantage I see with Twitter is the simplicity in publishing. It’s nearly trivial to send an e-mail - I mean, we can even do that in a SQL Server trigger.

Being aware of location

Another opportunity would be with location-aware clients. Imagine if you can subscribe to a channel of things close to me, which is especially powerful if you have a Twitter client on a GPS-enabled Blackberry, etc. When I’m in Union Square, a message from someone else in Union Square looking to grab a drink immediately becomes more relevant to me (perhaps more so than a message from Charlie when he’s on his cross-country trip). Location awareness is even more important when you get into commercial content that Charlie discussed.

Of course, like all location-based services, the real challenge is understanding geography. When I’m in the West Village, I may be more likely to meet up with someone up near Lincoln Center than someone in Jersey City. This can be addressed, and worst case scenario being able to follow anyone within 2 miles of me is still a useful feature.

By the way, obviously I use Twitter. Feel free to follow me and/or add me as a friend, especially if you’re in Manhattan or Brooklyn.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Looks like Sprint’s feverish approach to WiMAX just swallowed a chill pill, as the firm is reportedly “exploring new options for financing its ambitious plan.” In a presumed effort to “soothe investor concerns about the cost of the WiMAX plan,” the company is actually investigating a partnership or joint venture with Clearwire in order to simultaneously remove a potential competitor and gain access to the critical Clearwire markets in the southeastern US. Of course, Clearwire isn’t one to shy away from high stakes partnerships, and the FCC nod for a WiMAX-class laptop card that it garnered just last month could fit in quite well here. Still, Clearwire is refusing to comment just yet on whether this possibility is even feasible, but the mere mention of a spinoff likely means that Sprint isn’t feeling all too peachy about future WiMAX profitability. [Warning: Read link requires subscription]

[Via InformationWeek]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

So it looks like we’re not the only ones who are sick and tired of filling out forms and sending them in to Uncle Sam, as Singapore-based Creative has announced plans to delist its publicly traded shares from the NASDAQ Global Exchange, citing administrative costs associated with meeting “increasingly burdensome U.S. reporting obligations.” The manufacturer of such diverse products as X-Fi sound cards and Live! webcams expects to withdraw its ordinary shares by August 1st and move trading entirely over to the Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Limited, which already sees 90% of the company’s average worldwide daily trading volume anyway. As expected, Creative’s US shares have already started to tank as investors contemplate the complications of trading in a foreign market, but Creative diehards can probably anticipate a rebound once the integration has been completed. Or so our boiler room broker tells us…

[Via epiZENter]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Now this is more like it. Sure, we’ve seen the prices of HD DVD players slowly but surely sinking over time, and while there’s been more than a few inconvenient rebate offers of late, it looks like a new precedent has been set. Crutchfield is now offering up Toshiba’s HD-A2 HD DVD player for a mere $199 after a $100 instant rebate, but we wouldn’t count on this thing showing up anytime soon. According to the site, not only is inventory sitting at zero, but it also admits that the ship date is unfortunately “uncertain.” Still, $199 for a second-generation HD DVD player ain’t too shabby (have you seen one for less?), so be sure to check out the previous impressions before grabbing your place in the ever-growing line of customers trying to take advantage.

[Thanks, Andrew]

UPDATE: Too bad — looks like Crutchfield was forced to jack the price up by a Benjamin or face an order backlog beyond belief.

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

You should know by now that these brief claims of superiority won’t mean much when the other camp flips the numbers around and cranks out a jaw dropping figure of its own, but the North American HD DVD Promotional Group has recently announced that it’s currently livin’ the high life. Supposedly, standalone HD DVD players now hold 60-percent of the market share amongst standalone high-definition disc players, and the recent “aggressive spring retail and marketing campaigns” are to thank. Unsurprisingly, Toshiba’s heavily (albeit momentarily) discounted HD-A2 was dubbed the “best-selling next-gen DVD player model to date,” and we were even told that over 75,000 HD DVD titles were sold in the final week of May alone. The countdown for the Blu-ray rebuttal starts… now.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

We won’t bother trying to number crunch how much coin Apple will be laying down if sources at Business Week are right about just how many iPhones will be available to thrill come June 29th, but Cupertino better hope this thing takes off a tad quicker than the iPod did in 2001. Two separate sources have apparently noted that Apple will have a whopping three million iPhone units ready at launch, which should (if true) quell looming any shortage fears right off the bat. Interestingly, several analysts have predicted that the firm will only move about that many units this entire year, but we’re sure Apple won’t be complaining if any more iPhones are necessary to quench 2007’s demand. Here’s to hoping this Rev. A iPhone was thoroughly scrubbed for bugs beforehand, or else Steve & Co. could be dealing with quite a hefty basket of recalled Apples.

[Via AppleInsider]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Fellas, if you thought Ralph Lauren’s literal window shopping contraption was your wallet’s arch-rival, we’ve got some unfortunate news, and for the ladies (or guys) who just love to spend it up, HP’s about to become your very best friend. The clever gurus at HP Labs have developed a marketer’s dream tool that enables customers to enter a retail store, swipe a card, and instantly receive a printout (shown after the jump) that includes “a personalized shopping list, relevant coupons, notice of associated store discounts or sales, and even a map to where the items can be found in the store.” The inaccurately named Retail Store Assistant (we were thinking more along the lines of Wallet Depleter) is currently in the “experimental” stage, and would include an in-store kiosk which customers could access via a loyalty card or by inputting their phone number. Of course, this isn’t the first stab we’ve seen at retailers using previous history to target consumers, but the team behind this apparatus insists that it will be much more effective than the typical junk mail that barely graces our eyes before hitting the trash. Best Worst of all, the system will reportedly be available even on the web, meaning that those with an urge to shop can log on during the waning hours of the workday and plan out their shopping spree for maximum efficiency. Oh, the humanity.

Continue reading HP’s Retail Store Assistant: a wallet’s worst enemy

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Digital Cameras

We’d say “another one bites the dust,” only that in the case of multi-billion dollar company takeovers, the metaphorical particulate is invariably of the gold form. Yeah, the latest mega-corp takeover is here, as Pentax has been taken over by Japanese company, Hoya. The deal was overshadowed by some rough internal wrangling in Pentax, involving calls from shareholders to reinstate an ex-President in favor of the takeover: the end result being that the current one, Takashi Watanuki, was forced to agree to the merger. We can’t draw much from this deal at the moment, but as Hoya is involved in technology like medical imaging equipment, we’d expect a proportion of the impact to fall outside of our gadgetry remit. We’ve no fear that Pentax will be dropping out of the con / prosumer camera market just yet though, so for now just think of this as a business blip on your gadget radar.

[Via Photography Blog]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Joining the growing array of recent acquisitions is Planar and Runco International, as just today Planar has written a check for $36.7 million to take on the assets of privately-held Runco International, Inc. Planar, while not a household name in the home theater biz, managed to hold its own amongst competitors in the HT market, and while the majority of its products catered to the mid-range consumer, we suspect that picking up Runco was the easiest way to launch into the high-end realm. As expected, it looks like the Planar, Runco, and Vidikron brand names will remain as they are, and just as Planar will continue to sell through its current network of distributors, it sure sounds like Runco will remain a niche offering rather than bleeding over towards the mainstream.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Laptops

Granted, Sony’s BX-series of VAIOs has been around for quite some time, but the long-standing business lappie is getting a makeover in Europe that includes a hop over to Santa Rosa. This 15.4-inch widescreen machine packs a 1,280 x 800 resolution X-black LCD, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, WiFi, a multi-function drive bay that houses your choice of a dual-layer DVD writer or a secondary hard drive, Intel’s T7300 Core 2 Duo processor, ATI’s Mobility Radeon HD 2300 handling the graphics, and up to 2GB of RAM. Additionally, users will notice a fingerprint scanner, Sony’s G-Sensor HDD shock protector, Ethernet, a 56k modem, VGA out, stereo speakers, SD and MS flash card slots, a number of USB 2.0 ports, and a 4-pin FireWire connector to boot. Unfortunately, the VGN-BX41VN currently lacks an official price or release date, but there’s plenty of similar alternatives already out if you need something on the double. Click on through for a couple more glimpses.

[Via PCLaunches]

Continue reading Sony’s business savvy VAIO BX40 officially hits Europe

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Portable Audio, Wireless

For the XM Radio subscribers who haven’t patiently waited to hastily cancel your subscription just yet, we’re sure you’re well aware that the outages from yesterday are still lingering on. Reportedly, “software problems resulted in the loss of one of the network’s four satellite signals,” and while it expected to have everything back to normal by last night, sometime today is looking more likely. The company stated that “the problem occurred during the loading of software to a critical component of the satellite broadcast system,” and while XM has urged listeners to tune in online if possible, we all know this doesn‘t solve much. Notably, analysts are already pondering just how much loyalty (and cashflow) XM will lose from such an outage, and while we won’t bother to guess, each passing minute of dead air won’t do the customer satisfaction surveys any favors.

Update: XM is claiming service is back to normal.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Here in lawsuit-crazy America there’s only one thing to do if you don’t like a lawsuit: file another suit, claiming that the basis for the original claim was illegitimate. That’s the case with a recent filed class action lawsuit against Netflix, which argues that the company’s lawsuit against Blockbuster violates antitrust law because the company fraudulently concealed prior art related to patents used to sue Blockbuster. Techdirt points out that this new lawsuit highlights prior art that Netflix knew about, but failed to include in its original patent applications, something it was required to do. Yeah, that’s right, the whole affair hinges around the ineffective patenting system, which is the background for dozens of other technology related lawsuits. If this class action is successful, then Netflix will be left regretting ever filing against Blockbuster; if it’s not, then the company’s still got a whole lot of paperwork to do in its case against Blockbuster. As always, there’s one group left lovin’ the whole situation: the lawyers.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Utilizing RFID technology to defuse the threat of theft isn’t a fresh idea, but NXP Semiconductors and Kestrel Wireless are looking to make good on the premise by cranking out an anti-theft solution that just might appear on the next DVD you buy. By combining NXP’s RFID technology with Kestral’s RFA (radio frequency activation), manufacturers could install a minuscule chip on the optical media at the beginning of the supply chain which would render it unplayable, but having it scanned at a checkout counter would enable a series of authentication checks to occur and eventually unlock the media for playback. While the scenario may sound convoluted, it could allow manufacturers to skimp on bulky, restrictive packaging, and moreover, it could be applied to other items in the consumer electronics universe in order to deter thieves from trying to swipe expensive handheld gizmos. Of course, we can already envision the complaints that are sure to arise from legitimate buyers bringing home a coaster if the activation process happens to fail, but apparently, both companies are already hard at work persuading studios to write ‘em a check and get these things into stores.

[Via Physorg]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

China criticises US plans to file a complaint with the WTO over copyright piracy and counterfeiting of US goods.

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

The constant battle between impatient television viewers and disgruntled providers got a shot of adrenaline today, as Walt Disney’s two biggest channels have inked a deal with Cox Communications that is sure to simultaneously appease marketers and enrage customers. Reportedly, Cox will now begin to “disable the fast-forward feature that allows viewers to skip ads” in both ABC and ESPN video-on-demand, meaning that users who choose to view older programming via Cox’s VOD channels can smash the FF button ’til their heart’s content and get nowhere. Of course, users who actually set their DVR to record said content at its normal airing time are still free (for the moment, at least) to blaze right on through those annoying blips commercials, which means that you should probably become a lot more disciplined in your DVR scheduling if you belong to Cox. The worst (or best, depending on perspective) part is the precedent that this sets, as now the door is gaped wide open for more and more providers to grab the reigns of our DVRs and dictate just how far we push the notion of timeshifting. [Warning: Read link requires subscription]

[Via TechMeMe]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Cellphones

Sales records typically don’t stand for too long without being overtaken by the next best thing, but somehow, Nokia’s el cheapo 1100 handset has reportedly racked up “over 200 million sales” since it launched in 2003. You heard right, this low-end candybar has put the 100 million iPods, 50 million RAZRs, 10 million Chocolates, and 115 million PlayStation 2 consoles to shame in terms of sheer units moved. Interestingly enough, the design team that conjured up this cash cow originally dubbed it “Penny,” and the stripped down, dust-proof mobile purportedly entered the market at precisely the right time to catch the booming overseas growth as folks worldwide began snapping up their own cellphone. Of course, such a basic, uninspiring phone isn’t for everyone, but considering the 200 million strong that owned one sometime during their life, we’d say Nokia found a winner.

[Via Celularis, thanks Mariano]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

The adoration for Linux that has been flowing from Round Rock of late is both refreshing and curious, and Dell has just taken its respect for the open-source OS to another level by signing on with Microsoft and Novell. While Linux users have long griped (and protested) about Microsoft, it’s been no secret that Michael Dell has a thing for Ubuntu, and now it sounds like Dell will be “buying SUSE Linux Enterprise Server certificates from Microsoft,” and moreover, “will be setting up a services and marketing program aimed at getting users of open-source platforms to switch to the new SUSE Linux offering.” With the agreement inked, the Texas Powerhouse becomes the “first major systems provider to align with Microsoft and Novell in the collaboration,” and judging by all the other recent Linux happenings in the Dell arena, we’d say this deal aligns perfectly with its current strategy.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Gaming

It’s fairly safe to assume that Microsoft as a whole ain’t hurtin’ in the wallet, but for its Xbox platform, the positive cash flow is (possibly) just around the corner. According to an interview with Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division, the firm’s gaming business “will be profitable next year,” which will certainly be a breath of fresh air considering how much loot it has been losing for years in the arena. Still, it’s not like any major competitors aren’t suffering through the same pains, and while the Big N is smiling all the way to the bank with the profits it makes on every Wii sold, we’re glad that at least a few consoles are offering up high-definition and true online play regardless of the cost. Obviously, the continual decrease in component costs are making the consoles cheaper to produce, but Bach went so far as to point out that (overpriced) peripherals, an increased user base on Xbox Live, and software sales would be the primary margin drivers next year. So now that the Xbox 360 is looking rosy, what’s to be done about the Zune?

[Via Joystiq]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!