CNBC's Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money, dropped his predictions for 2008 in New York magazine this week. Along with some safe bets like "oil goes up" and "Goldman Sachs makes a lot of money," Cramer throws out some unlikely but not off-the-wall predictions about Verizon and Apple. But then when he gets to Google, he…
Orange, Apple's French iPhone partner, announced that it sold 70,000 iPhones during its first month of sales. This is "right in line" with the public target of 50,000-100,000 units sold. [Thomson Financial] (Photo by mukluk)
Should we be creeped out that Google's getting into electoral politics? The search engine has launched a special Iowa caucus map on Google Maps. Innocent and useful enough, we suppose. Starting tonight, the page will display real-time caucus results by county and party from across the state. All this technology almost…
Loren Feldman, the transgressive online-video maker and would-be comic, slams Scoble's "woe-is-me" posturing over his Facebook ban. Play the video, or read on for the choicest bit.
The FBI has made a deal with Clear Channel to put "most wanted" bulletins and "hot pursuit" alerts on digital billboards around the country. Predictable: The SiliconView digital billboard on the 101 was just the beginning. The future of outdoor advertising is digital billboards which can display different ads…
On December 30 and 31, Mac OS X accounted for 8 percent of computers browsing websites monitored by Net Applications, up 6.8 percent from November. Windows Vista? 10.5 percent. [Computerworld]
Saudi blogger Fouad al-Farhan was arrested by government authorities and detained for "purposes of interrogation." Fouad says, in a letter posted on his blog, that he was arrested because he "wrote about the political prisoners here in Saudi Arabia, and they think I'm running an online campaign promoting their issue."…
Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project may be better named "No Laptop Per Child," at the rate it's going. Back in November, the Wall Street Journal essentially labeled the project a failure. Now, the group is being sued for $20 million by a Nigerian company for patent infringement. Let's hope OLPC doesn't…
The Bush administration is facing criticism over its decision to allow sales of certain high-tech equipment to China. Some experts think the products could help China modernize its military or share knowledge with Iran and Syria. Among the exports now allowed: telecommunications equipment, a key sector for the Valley.…
As expected, Disney has signed a deal with Apple to provide digital movie rentals over iTunes. The terms are similar to last week's deal with Fox. While this isn't particularly surprising — Steve Jobs owns a huge chunk of Disney from when the company bought his Pixar animation studio — it is good news for Apple. Can…
The porn industry is taking a back seat in the high-def format wars. Unlike the VHS-Betamax battles of the early '80s, where porn fans helped VHS win, the industry has released very few X-rated HD titles. The reason? "Porn is a fantasy and the added resolution sometimes detracts from that fantasy." [Investor's…
Warner Music has struck a deal to bring its
entire
back catalog, free of copying restrictions, to the Amazon MP3 store. (New releases from artists like Josh Groban are not included.) This brings the total number of songs available on Amazon to 2.9 million, and strikes another blow at Steve Jobs's quest to remove…
Also in Apple's movie rental deal yesterday with Fox: Apple will license its FairPlay copy-protection technology to the studio for DVD movie releases. This will allow DVD purchasers to easily — and legally — copy movies to their computers for playback on iPods and iPhones.
The Financial Times reports that Apple and News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox film studio have signed a deal for digital movie rentals. Consumers will be able to rent the latest Fox DVD releases from iTunes for a limited time. The deal, which will likely be announced at Macworld in January, would likely be matched with an…
ESPN and Yahoo Sports are on a hiring binge, bringing six-figure salaries to the generally tame world of sportswriting and stealing talent from print publications who can't afford anything close to the lucrative offers Yahoo and ESPN are serving up. The Washington Post has lost three writers to ESPN in 18 months. ESPN…
Chen Yuhua has taken the Chinese government to court over its removal of a Web post critical of the government's restrictions on dogs over 14 inches tall. The dog owner says he followed the letter of the law in his rare challenge to his country's Internet-censorship regime. [Washington Post]
This Saturday's Patriots-Giants NFL game will be simulcast nationally on NBC, CBS and the NFL Network. This is the first time since Super Bowl I in 1967 that two networks have simultaneously broadcasted a NFL game. The game, which was originally to be shown only on the NFL Network, was the subject of much controversy,…
Craigslist founder Craig Newmark discusses 12-year-old Craigslist's past and future in an interview. He never specifically addresses how he got millions of dollars from eBay in a side deal when it acquired a stake in his company. He does have this to say on how he runs Craigslist: "There's nothing noble or altruistic…
A San Francisco woman reported her Honda Civic stolen to the San Francisco police. A few weeks later, she got a parking citation in the mail for her stolen car. Then she got another. And another. In total, her car got ticketed 29 times while being listed as stolen. She called the police and the city's Department of…
Japan's dominant wireless carrier, NTT DoCoMo, will use Google's Internet search and email on the carrier's handsets. [WSJ]
