February 22, 2012
- California's attorney general reached a deal with six of the largest companies in the mobile-device market over privacy policies for apps.
- One of the benefits of social media changing the nature of brands' conversations with their customers is the increase in many companies' philanthropic efforts. In this conversation, I speak with author Rachel Armbruster, known for her work as director of development at the Lance Armstrong Foundation during the iconic yellow wristband campaign. We look at the landscape at the intersection of brand marketing and corporate giving, starting with reasons why companies should be motivated...
- Hewlett-Packard's fiscal first-quarter earnings fell 44% as sales in the company's personal computers business continued to fall.
- Several start-ups are hoping to piggyback on the recent popularity of social-networking site Pinterest.com.
- Some early adopters of Hadoop, software that makes it easier and cheaper to analyze vast amounts of data, say it challenging to use and rolling it out will take time.
- Former inventor Ray Kurzweil, who believes computers will soon think like humans and ultimately merge with us, a notion he has dubbed "the singularity," discusses his predictions and his status as a polarizing figure.
- Amazon pulled more than 4,000 e-books distributed by the Independent Publishers Group off its site this week after it failed to exact better terms from the distributor.
- As the market for technology IPOs revs up and the biggest banks seek to capitalize on the size of their balance sheets, the practice of companies selecting underwriters that also provided loans to them is coming under focus, spurred by Facebook's IPO process.
- The fastest high-speed Internet service is courtesy of OnLive Desktop Plus. The “plus” is a 1-gigabit-a-second Net connection with Adobe Reader thrown in.
- A group of dozens of state attorneys general have raised concerns with Google over the Internet giant's new privacy policy, marking the latest public flare-up over the planned changes.