The end for GeoCities?
Yahoo Inc. announced recently that it will be shutting down it’s GeoCities Free Web Hosting services this year. Yahoo acquired GeoCities for $3 billion in 1999.
GeoCities no longer accept new accounts, and recommended it’s users to Yahoo Paid hosting services. This is a meesage from GeoCities Website.
Thirteen year-old wins Apple’s billion app contest
Apple on Friday revealed the name of the winner of its billion app countdown contest. It’s Connor Mulcahey, a 13 year-old who hails from Weston, Conn.
Mulcahey downloaded the one billionth app: Bump, a contact information swapping application developed by Bump Technologies.
Geneva Motor Show 2009
The International Geneva Motor Show (Salon International de l’Auto) is an annual auto show held in March in the Swiss city of Geneva. The show started in 1905. The show is held at the Geneva Palexpo, a giant convention center located next to the International Airport. The Salon is scheduled by the Organisation Internationale des Constructeurs d’Automobiles, which considers it a major international auto show.
Almost all motor combustion models have been featured in the show — ranging from benzene to steam, with many exotic and supercars stealing the spotlights throughout the 20th century. Prototypes, new equipment, technical breakthroughs, and international partnerships as well as political and social debates are all landmarks of this international exhibition. The show is regarded as the most level playing field for carmakers with Switzerland lacking an auto industry.
YouTube just pass the 100 million US viewers a month
According to comScore, YouTube hit a new monthly high in January, topping 100 million as it dominated the online video arena.
The overall number of videos watched online in the US in January climbed 4 percent from the previous month to 14.8 billion, with YouTube viewing accounting for 91 percent of that growth, comScore reported Wednesday.
Google-owned websites, predominantly YouTube, ranked at the top of the US online video heap with 6.4 billion snippets watched during the month, according to comScore.
Apple Mac growing overseas but facing challenges
As U.S. demand for personal computers craters, Apple Inc is getting a boost from overseas PC sales, where iPods are hugely popular but Macs have not been a major presence.
Although analysts see the international market as fertile ground for Macs, they say the growth momentum may be tough to maintain due to the spreading economic gloom, Mac’s higher price point and smaller retail distribution network.
Mac shipments in the December quarter grew 16 percent internationally and a mere 2 percent in the United States. Mac sales made up more than 40 percent of Apple’s revenue in fiscal 2008.
Amazon misread book sector on speech feature
Amazon chose to keep secret from much of the publishing sector the text-to-speech feature built into the Kindle 2.
Instead, Amazon sprung the feature on publishers and the retailer is now taking public-relations hits that it might have avoided if it hadn’t been so tight lipped.
Following the debut of the Kindle 2, the 9,000-member Authors Guild claimed text-to-speech created a derivative work and violated copyright. Paul Aiken, the guild’s president said many publishers were also angered over the speech function, adding that Amazon never consulted beforehand with either of those groups. Amazon responded Friday by handing publishers the ability to disable the text-to-speech feature on any title they choose.
Google Sinks Atlantis Discovery Buzz
Last week, a British man announced he’d found the lost city of Atlantis using Google Ocean — the latest add-on to Google Earth that features 3D bathymetry, which lets you explore the ocean floor. The supposed ‘Atlantis’ image is about 620 miles off the northwestern coast of Africa and south of Portugal. It shows a rectangular grid with what looks like roadways leading away from it at the coordinates 31 15’15.53N 24 15’30.53W. According to The Telegraph, the newspaper that first reported the “discovery,” the pattern is roughly the size of Wales (around 8,000 sq. mi.).
Friday’s find sparked intense interest online despite the farfetched claim. Many scratched their heads wondering, what if? After all, this underwater discovery seemed to match the location Plato had described in his writings. Plato said Atlantis was a massive island that was “larger than Libya and Asia together,” and located at a “distant point in the Atlantic Ocean…in front of the mouth of the pillars of Hercules” (the Straits of Gibraltar).
Xbox 360 Outsells Playstation 3
Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console has sold over 28 million units worldwide, 8 million more than the Sony Playstation 3.
According to figures from Microsoft, the Xbox 360 is ahead of the Playstation 3 by one million units in Europe and by 7 million in the US.
However, both consoles are being outsold by the Nintendo Wii, which sold 3 million units in the UK and 10.17 million in the US last year.
Yahoo Rises as Yang Exit Sparks Microsoft Speculation
Yahoo! Inc., owner of the second- largest U.S. Internet-search engine, rose 8.7 percent in Nasdaq trading after Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang agreed to step down, opening the door for a fresh Microsoft Corp. bid.
Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, California, climbed 92 cents to $11.55 at 4 p.m. New York time on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The gain was the largest in a month.
Before today, the company’s market value had fallen by more than $20 billion since Yang took over last year as discussions with Microsoft failed, an ad partnership with Google Inc. collapsed and talks with Time Warner Inc.’s AOL stalled. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said the resignation may fuel speculation of renewed talks with Microsoft or another suitor.
AMD Unveils a Server Chip Called Shanghai
The new computer chip is more versatile than a comparable one that Intel will release in a few days, giving AMD an important advantage.
Advanced Micro Devices is releasing a computer chip that could give it a much-needed boost against bigger rival Intel (INTC).
On Nov. 13, AMD (AMD) unveiled a processor, code-named Shanghai, for use in servers, the powerful computers that run corporate networks. Unlike other recent chips from AMD, Shanghai is being released on time, and it will be more versatile than a comparable chip due to be released from Intel in the coming days.