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Valleywag
Online Video
How does Google compare to Microsoft after ten years?
Google is celebrating its tenth birthday this month — so how is it doing compared to Microsoft, which is a ripe old 33? Microsoft is still the big dog, earning three times the revenue in the last year. But Bill Gates and company had only booked $140 million in revenue by its tenth year. Google employees are also punching above their weight, booking $1 million per head to Team Redmond's $672,000. If Google figures out how to make money on anything besides search advertising, the $99 billion market value differential might evaporate in time for a bar mitvah in Mountain View. [NYT]
Shipping, wages make China less attractive to electronics manufacturers
Thanks to rising fuel prices and wage inflation in China, it's actually more expensive to manufacture and ship electronics across the Pacific for the American market than it would be to produce them domestically, according to a report from The McKinsey Quarterly. But iPhone assembly plants won't be coming to a depressed rust-belt community near you, because it's cheaper still to produce those electronics in a Mexican maquiladora. Though I hear prison labor is a real bargain, and there's no shortage of that here in the states. [Broadstuff]
Online Video
Online Video
Amazon's video on demand more "piddling" than "streaming"
While Amazon makes no claims as to the quality of video from its new "video on demand" online streaming service being comparable to DVD quality, a measly 1.2 megabit per second data rate is still laughable. To put it in perspective, standard-definition DVDs typically run well over 6Mbps (Apple laughably calls the 5Mbps offerings from iTunes "HD," purely based on pixel dimensions and not data depth). And based on your connection speed, Amazon might deliver even less digital resolution. All of this for up to $14.99 to "own" a movie stored wrapped in Adobe's Flash DRM. Granted, Amazon is hindered by the slow broadband connections typical in American households, but keeping the bitrate low also keeps bandwidth costs down — and margins high.
Failanthropy
Google touts charity-race win, ignore injured competitor, charity
Team Google, stocked with runners from company outposts across the country, finished third out 147 corporate teams in the Hood to Coast relay race sponsored by Nike. The course takes runners from Mount Hood to the Pacific Ocean through Oregon. Team Yahooligans? They finished 140th. Google proudly touted the efforts of the team on the official corporate blog. Fast, sure, but were the ultracompetitive Googlers good sports? More »
Politics
Join Tom Siebel and Sarah Palin for lunch
John McCain's pick for his running mate, Sarah Palin, will be dropping by the Bay Area for a fundraising lunch hosted by Siebel Systems founder Tom Siebel and his wife Stacey. Don't worry, Republicans won't have to visit San Francisco and be pestered by illegal immigrants, environmentalists, activists judges or Siebel's new cousin-in-law, hunky God-mayor Gavin Newsom — the lunch will be held on Thursday, September 25th at the Siebel's manse in sleepy Woodside. How much will it cost you? More »
Quotable
Valleywag mangles Marc Andreessen, and we think he likes it
PALO ALTO — Thursday night in a Crowne Plaza hotel, with an Elks Club banquet roaring next door, Netscape cofounder, Ning king, and Facebook board member Marc Andreessen sat down with Portfolio writer Kevin Maney for a Churchill Club interview. This wasn't exactly what Andreessen had planned. Back in May, he wrote on his blog that he planned to stop speaking in public: "Used to be, if you wanted to get a message out into the market, you would give a talk at a conference, a reporter would write down some of what you said and mangle the rest, and you'd call it a day.... Mid-year resolution #1: No more public speaking. Mid-year resolution #2: More blogging." Two weeks later, he stopped blogging. Here follows a thoroughly mangled version of his comments. Marc, you have no one to blame but yourself. More »
Online Video
Michael Moore's latest agitprop will be free at Blip.tv
Slacker Nation, which focuses on chubby doc jock Michael Moore's trip around the country to drum up support among the youngs for "voting," will be distributed online for free. Online video site Blip.tv will be hosting the download in a nice little marketing coup (the fact that Blip.tv cofounder and CEO Mike Hudack loves him some Obama couldn't have hurt in striking that deal). "This is being done entirely as a gift to my fans," Moore said in a prepared statement. Time will tell if it's a gift to the Democratic party — Moore's stunt tactics, like his ramen noodle giveaways featured in the trailer, often galvanize older Republicans who actually do show up to the polls on election day, unlike young Democrats.
Hardware
Dell to sell factories worldwide
Insiders have blabbed to the Wall Street Journal that Dell "has approached contract computer manufacturers with offers to sell ... its computer factories." Founder Michael Dell is a Texan, not a Valley guy. But he did build a $1,000 investment into the world's biggest PC maker, starting from his college dorm in 1984. Shedding its factories would be a huge change for Dell, which made its name on build-to-order sales. Why would Dell dump its plants? More »
Microsoft
Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Gates star in nonsensical new ad campaign
Long-time Macintosh enthusiast Jerry Seinfeld kicks off the new Microsoft campaign by spotting company cofounder Bill Gates at a fictional discount shoe store. The 90-second spot makes a lot less sense from there. Can't say for certain if this is the spot that Michel Gondry directed, but it certainly has the loopy narrative touches, playful music and one giveaway visual cue: A shot of someone wearing shoes and socks in the shower. It makes no mention of technology until the end, when Seinfeld asks when Microsoft will make an edible computer — and then the audience is treated to Bill Gates adjusting himself in his boxer shorts, hands-free. The whole production says "quirky," not slick or cool, but then Windows Vista is full of maddening quirks.
One Laptop Per Child
HiVision to ship $98 MiniNote laptop in October
In the race to develop the first mass-producible laptop that costs less than $100 has apparently been won by Chinese company HiVision, which currently offers an adorable, pink, 7" MiniNote for $120 but plans to introduce a model in October that will retail for only $98. Like the Lemote laptop that radical open source guru Richard Stallman uses, it couldn't run Windows if you wanted it to. But it comes with a free installation of Xip, a Linux distribution from China, and runs Firefox. But then Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project decided to go with Windows and with that decision alone the size and cost ballooned. Would be just the thing for running Google's new Chrome browser — that is, if the Chrome browser supported Linux.
Exclusive
MySQL founder quits Sun
"Just heard that Monty gave his resignation to Sun today," a tipster we trust writes about Michael Widenius, the Finnish-born main author of open-source database software MySQL. Sun Microsystems had aqcuired Monty's company, also called MySQL, for a cool billion in January. So who's running the show now? Best guess is Brian Aker, another prominent MySQL developer. Aker released a lightweight, Web 2.0-oriented version of MySQL called Drizzle in late July, but he's still at Sun.
Careers
Apple geniuses make 56 percent more than Geek Squad agents
Company-review site Glassdoor says that according to employees at both companies, Apple's repair technicians — known as "geniuses," with the attitude to match — make $18.30 per hour and $36,000 per year on average. That's about 56 percent more than Best Buy's Geek Squad "agents," who earn $11.58 per hour and $23,000 per year. The reason for the difference? Apple's "geniuses" are tasked with repairing beautiful objects that restore your sense of childlike wonder, whilst their Best Buy counterparts open tickets on junk in black plastic cases. Right, Steve?
Most Popular Stories
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- Ad agency's intern-recruitment video sure to drive away interns (17 comments, 744 views)
- Googlers celebrate company's 10th birthday in Greece (11 comments, 1,085 views)
Commenter Of The Day
roybar
We implored for stories of real engineers in Silicon Valley — the ones that messes with diodes, PCBs, chips, nuts and bolts. But what we got is a heart-warming rant by roybar, today's featured commenter, about what's wrong with the Valley in the first place: More »
online advertising
Sexing up Sarah Palin with Photoshop draws AdSense ire
A photo that may or may not depict a young, nude and brunette Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska and the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee, has made the tabloid rounds after being featured on blog Hollywood Newsroom. It was sent in as part of a Photoshopping contest, but looks legitimate enough as a photograph (though not necessarily of Palin). Either way, it's too racy for Google — which strictly forbids placing its automated advertising next to "adult or mature" content. More »
Caption Contest
Kindle on a plane
Kindlespotting continues, with a reader sending us this picture of a reader on a flight from Dallas to San Francisco. Considering how much the e-book readers cost and the premium prices for the content, you'd think this reader would be in first class — then again, after paying Amazon $359 plus shipping for the gadget, maybe all he could afford was coach. Go on, write a better caption in the comments. Best one will become the new headline. Yesterday's winner in our very special caption contest: "And now that I've had Firefox dig this hole in the desert for me..." by Beachfront_Perk.
The Sum of All Human Knowledge
Jimmy Wales and the art of the modern breakup
Another failed relationship, another awkward online parting of ways for Jimmy Wales, the cofounder of Wikipedia. Just a few months ago, he was squiring new-agey PR impresario Andrea Weckerle, a self-described "global nomad," around the world. Now, insiders say, Weckerle has dumped Wales — you can tell, because she no longer follows his Twitter updates. The puzzle here: How does he put so much energy into chasing women when he's supposedly leading the world's largest collection of unfactchecked assertions backed up by hyperlinks, and taking on Google with Wikia, his for-profit offshoot? More »
Mine Is Bigger
Intel says screw it, we're going for six cores
Just when you blew your IT budget on quad-core servers, Intel has a six-core Xeon 7400 processor that'll be available from Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell starting September 15th. I'm a bit disappointed, because I was hoping they'd also boost the 7400's L3 cache to 32 megs. But that's just me.
strategery
Yahoo Hack Day next week to reveal company's lack of a plan
Apple's not the only Valley company planning a big event next week. Yahoo's Hack Day, a gathering for developers who want to plug their services into Yahoo's websites, will double as an unveiling of Yahoo's "open strategy." What is this strategy, exactly? An attempt to take on Google and Facebook by making it easier to tap into Yahoo's search index and user profiles. What will be announced? Nothing you haven't already heard about, we expect, but it's safe to predict you'll hear Yahoo executives begging people to build derivative search engines with its Boss service. It's a bit like Tom Sawyer asking other kids to paint the fence for him, except he forgot to bring paint. And a fence.
sex trade
Fake a phone number for your online hookups
No one wants to give their last-minute, late-night, drunk-from-the-open bar Craigslist "date" their real phone number. It's this free-sex market that Hookupdigits hopes to tap: the site generates proxy phone numbers that expire after 7 days, good for calls ten minutes or less in length. Other startups have gone here before: Numbr was a disposable call forwarding service, and Jangl gave both halves of the hookup a unique number. Both have since folded. The failures of its predecessors isn't Hookupdigits biggest problem. Let's start with the photo they use as their lead graphic — of San Francisco Web microcelebrities Chris Messina and Tara Hunt, whose "digitally enabled breakup" was so blogged about that it made it into print. More »Pull My Finger app rejected by Apple
Victor Wang — huh-huh — from Apple emailed the author of the Pull My Finger app, shown above, to explain that the interactive fart-noise program was deemed "of limited utility to the broad user community." I wonder what would happen if they applied a "utility" standard to the music videos sold through the same store? Wang's full email: More »
Digital Music
Metallica's new album leaked, but band's just happy they still have fans
Lars Ulrich, Metallica's Internet-hating drummer, explained to a Bay Area radio station that he's glad the band's new album got leaked all over the world. A copy of the album was bought in a French record store and quickly uploaded to the Internet. The band's new stance is a big jump from 2000, when they sued Napster for distributing their music without permission. Since then Metallica has worked out ways of selling their music online by themselves, finally relenting to iTunes sales in 2006. If you still have a taste for Metallica, head on over to your favorite torrent site. Lars said it's okay.
In Brief
How To Afford Your Dream Apartment: Lifestream!
FROM GAWKER.COM: Nonsociety—it's more than a website, it's a way to "Live Differently." Oh, how we laughed at dating columnist Julia Allison's new "lifestreaming" website that repackages her (and her friends') lives—and is thought to be a run-up to some sort of reality show/dating web show/something. More »
Politics
Pesky humans ruin flawless e-vote in Florida
Thousands of ballots in a tight race for a seat on Florida's 15th Circuit Court never made it into the optical ballot scanners. Wired's Kim Zetter, who's covered e-voting for years, has the hard-to-follow story. Ars Technica also hit up election officials for an explanation. Here's a two-line summary of the whole thing: More »
Stats
58 percent of Internet users haven't even heard of social networks
Sheryl Sandberg's right! We've teased Facebook's overserious COO for talking up Facebook's need to sign up more users before figuring out how it's going to make billions of dollars off of them. But analytics firm eMarketer says only 42 percent of the Internet-using world knows about social networks. Translation: A lucky 58 percent are not burdened with worrying about whether they've made anybody's top friends list. Heck, while we're at it: Less than a quarter of the world's 6.6 billion people have access to the Internet. That means 5.97 billion people have no reason to have ever heard of Sandberg, let alone blame her for global warming, violence in the Middle East, and cat allergies. Not yet, anyway.
Great Moments in Customer Service
