Could! Yahoo! be! sold! to! private! buyers?
Yahoo! co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang wants to take the ailing web company out of the stock market in a deal with private equity firms, if the latest speculation on the firm's future is to be believed.
People close to the inner mechanisms of Yahoo! have been doing their thing with Reuters, whispering to the newswire that Yang fancies the idea of going back to private investment while hanging on to his 3.63 per cent stake.
Since firing Carol Bartz from the chief exec seat in September, Yahoo! has been working with advisers Allen & Co and Goldman Sachs on a "strategic review", which speculators have taken to mean some form of sale of the company or at least some of its assets.
And despite its flagging fortunes, there are a number of suitors willing to snap up the former internet darling.
Last week, Jack Ma, boss of Alibaba, told a gathering of people at Stanford University that his company would be "very interested in Yahoo!", according to Reuters. Read more...
Legal reform needed to govern data
Legal experts and law enforcement agents say new and updated laws are required to protect user privacy while allowing law enforcement to catch cybercriminals.
A revamp to the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act will help set policy around new technology that the creators of that law didn't imagine, panelists said during a cybercrime conference hosted by the University of Washington's School of Law on Friday.
The act was written long before current email systems were devised. "In 1986, no one thought email would be stored indefinitely, so the statute says that 180-day-old email is stale and therefore not in need of protection," explained Sharon Nelson, formerly the director of the Shidler Center for Law, Commerce and Technology at the University of Washington School of Law.
That means law enforcement doesn't need a warrant to access emails from 180 days ago, or emails and other data stored in the cloud, experts said. Read more...
The IT job outlook: 5 questions answered
IT continues to show signs of recovery, even as the rest of the economy remains in the doldrums. Will the good news continue? And if so, what does that mean for IT jobs?
Let's get real: Probably only a handful of European bankers know for sure. Barring a global financial collapse, however, the outlook for IT jobs looks pretty darn good based on the results of recent surveys. No doubt you have questions. We've done our best to produce answers to the five most obvious ones.
Question: Will IT budgets increase this year?
Answer: It sure looks that way.
According to Gartner, worldwide IT spending will increase 7.1 percent this year to $3.7 trillion -- up from its earlier estimates of 5.6 percent. Why? Because enterprises will be spending even more on cloud migration, IT services, and telecom. Boosting productivity and cutting costs -- the No. 1 agenda item for CIOs in 2010 -- is now No. 4 on the list, according to a recent survey conducted by the Society for Information Management (SIM). Read more...
EU antitrust regulators give Microsoft-Skype deal green light
Antitrust regulators in the European Union today approved Microsoft's $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype, the online telephone and chat giant.
"The Commission considers that there are no competition concerns in this growing market where numerous players, including Google, are present," the European Commission, the EU's antitrust agency, said in a statement today, referring to competition concerns for consumers, who make up the bulk of Skype's customers.
The commission also dismissed concerns that the deal would stifle competition in the enterprise communication market. Read more...
McNealy: I would have run HP if they’d asked me
Scott McNealy, the former chairman and CEO of Sun Microsystems, would have accepted the job of running Hewlett-Packard if he had been asked, he said this week.
McNealy was among the candidates interviewed for the position, he said, in a contest that ultimately went to Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay.
"I was asked to come interview, and I told them I would do the job if they couldn't find a suitable candidate," McNealy said Wednesday in an interview at his home in Silicon Valley.
"Their office is three miles from my house. I know the business, I have an army of Sun people who would have come helped me," he said.
Running HP wasn't something he was necessarily keen to do, however. Read more...
Easy automation for Google+
Last week, I told you about a great new service called "If This Then That" (IFTTT), which lets you automate things online. I also gave instructions on how to post on Google+ via email.
Together, these let you automatically post things to Google+. But I didn't tell you how, exactly. I announced a "contest" to see who could come up with the most useful and fun Google+ automations using IFTTT.
If you're as lazy as I am, you'll be thrilled to learn that once created, these automations -- called "recipes" -- can be shared and easily re-used by anybody. And I'll share the winning entries with you below.
But first, let's take a look at what this automating Google+ thing is all about.
There are two basic directions for automating Google+: incoming and outgoing. To automate is to set it up so that things are put in or taken out automatically, without you having to do anything. Read more...
Mass. schools team up for supercomputer center
At a gritty industrial site occupied a century ago by a textile mill, five universities are collaborating to install supercomputers that will recreate the start of the universe and perform other research.
The developers of the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center, which is being built and is expected to be operating by the end of next year, were drawn to Holyoke for the same reason industrialists flocked to the city in the 19th century: cheap water power from the Connecticut River.
"It's coming full circle for us," said John Goodhue, executive director of the project. Read more...
Record pre-orders for iPhone 4S, despite gloomy predictions on demand
It’s an understatement to describe last week as momentous for Apple and its new iPhone:
—Co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs succumbed to pancreatic cancer Wednesday after a seven-year battle and was buried on Friday.
—On Tuesday, new CEO Tim Cook held his first event at Apple’s Cupertino’s HQ, rather than up the pike in San Francisco, traditional site for such doings. Cook unveiled the next generation of phones, iPhone 4S (for Steve?).
Some technophiles and critics may were underwhelmed by Cook’s announcement: no massive redesign, no 4-inch screen. 4S looks like 4.
Still, the phone has a higher-resolution camera, a faster A5 processor and Siri, a voice-powered assistant. 4S was seen as more of an evolution than a revolution. Read more...
Samsung delays new Android model release after Jobs’s death
Samsung Electronics Co said on Monday it had delayed the launch of a new smartphone based on Google's latest version of the Android operating system while the world pays tribute to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs who died last week.
The delay also comes as an intensifying legal battle between Apple and Samsung reaches a crucial point this week, when the two technology giants will meet in courtrooms in the United States, the Netherlands, Australia, South Korea and Japan.
Samsung had planned to introduce the new product based on the Ice Cream Sandwich system, which will unite the Android software used in tablets and smartphones, at its Mobile Unpack event in San Diego on Tuesday.
"We decided it was not the right time to announce a new product while the world was expressing tribute to Steve Jobs's passing," a Samsung spokesman said. Read more...