HP deepens push into cell phone market (AP)
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The iPAQ 600 Series Business Navigator looks and functions like a cell phone and includes a navigation feature with 3-D maps. It’s HP’s second cell phone, coming on the heels of the Voice Messenger announced in February.
The company also announced the iPAQ 900 Series Business Messenger, a smart phone with a full keyboard that follows another full-keyboard model introduced last year.
Palo Alto-based HP unveiled the phones at a major launch in New York. Both run on the latest in third-generation, or 3G, high-speed networks. No carriers have been announced yet, but HP said the phones are planned to work with most major carriers.
The new phones are a key part of HP’s efforts to expand its iPAQ brand of handheld products beyond PDA devices, which still sell briskly, though their popularity is fading in favor of more phone-like gadgets.
HP, which supplanted Dell Inc. last year as the No. 1 seller of PCs worldwide, is better known for its PCs and extremely profitable printer ink than its handheld devices.
Still, HP is a major player in the PDA world, ranking second behind market-leader Palm Inc. in worldwide PDA sales for the first half of 2007, according to market research firm IDC. More than 22 percent of the 1.6 billion PDAs sold in that period were HP products, according to IDC.
But the rise of smart phones has pressured PDA makers. The success of gadgets like Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry and Palm’s Treo — and now Apple Inc.’s iPhone — is prodding handheld device makers to beef up their offerings in an increasingly Internet-connected world.
PDAs are increasingly seen as companions to cell phones and smart phones instead of the all-in-one device they were once were, said Gene Wang, vice president of marketing for HP’s handhelds unit.
“It’s less that the PDA business is going away, and more that, especially with the new 3G networks coming out, you can put so many new features and services to work,” Wang said. “It really brings the enterprise the productivity they’re looking for.”
When it comes to smart phones, HP is clearly still the newcomer. Less than one percent of the 53 million smart phones shipped during the first six months of the year were HP products, according to IDC.
Analysts said the company is facing an uphill battle as it fights entrenched competitors in the market of mobile devices sold to businesses.
But it also has deep pockets and tight relationships with customers who for years have relied on HP servers, PCs and services, analysts said.
“They’re facing some stiff, stiff competition, and they’re also walking a road where there’s a lot of charred wreckage,” said Crawford Del Prete, an IDC analyst. “But they’re also HP and they have a lot of resources to do this.”
The two phones were announced Wednesday as HP took the wraps off a slew of products from its Personal Systems Group, the division that brought in $29.2 billion in sales last year and includes consumer and business PCs, plasma and LCD flat-screen televisions and PDAs.
Starbucks to offer free iTunes access in stores (Reuters)
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The service will debut at more than 600 Starbucks stores in New York and Seattle on October 2, the companies said, and will be expanded to other major U.S. cities later this year and next.
Through the deal, Starbucks hopes to boost both its coffee sales and its new music business, while Apple's iTunes seeks to sell more downloads. Terms were not disclosed.
Starbucks customers with either the new iPod touch just announced on Wednesday or an iPhone or a computer running iTunes will be able to navigate to the new iTunes Wi-Fi music store without paying a connection fee.
Currently, customers pay to use the Wi-Fi wireless Internet service provided by Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile at Starbucks' U.S. stores.
While navigating the iTunes online store, customers will be able to see what song is playing in the Starbucks store at that moment and buy it with one click.
"We know a lot of people are going to be very happy with this new combination of coffee and iPods," Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said. He said the two companies had been working on the deal for more than two years.
In an interview, Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz declined to discuss the deal except to say it is "mutually beneficial to both Apple and Starbucks."
Schultz said he expected the service to bring new customers to Starbucks — especially users of the newest iPods.
"It is highly relevant and very cool for young people to buy these new devices, and certainly we recognize that demographic and age profile is younger than our core customer," he said.
Seattle-based Starbucks, which already had been selling CDs in its stores, earlier this year launched its own label, Hear Music. It released the latest album by Paul McCartney in June and has also signed artists such as James Taylor and Joni Mitchell.
Starbucks shares fell 28 cents, or 1 percent, to close at $27.44 on Nasdaq, and Apple shares close down $7.40, or 5 percent, at $136.76.
(Reporting by Scott Hillis and Nichola Groom)
Apple puts Wi-Fi in iPod Touch (InfoWorld)
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"Today we're here to talk about music," Jobs said.
"We've distributed 600 million copies of iTunes so far, and customers have bought and downloaded over 3 billion songs from iTunes. iTunes is the number one online music store in every single one of the 22 countries it operates in," he explained. "We started with just 200,000 songs, and we have over 6 million songs in every single one of those stores."
Jobs told the audience that the iTunes Store — now the No. 3 music retailer in the United States behind Wal-Mart and Best Buy — carries more than 550 television shows and has sold 95 million TV shows to date. The service features links to more than 125,000 podcasts, with more than 25,000 of them featuring video.
"This last stat I want to share with you blew my mind. In the U.S., of all the music releases in 2006, 32 percent were digital-only releases," said Jobs. "They were not released on a CD. Wow. Look how far we've come: A third of the music released in this country was not on a CD.
"So that gives you a feeling for how far we've coming in the last five years in the digital music revolution."
Jobs revealed that Apple plans to release a new version of iTunes on Wednesday evening that will support the products that are being announced Wednesday — and the biggest new feature in iTunes will be ring tone support for the iPhone.
"We're going to do ring tones in our own special way," explained Jobs.
"And, of course, these are for the iPhone. And what we want is rather than having someone make ring tones for us, we're going to make a custom ring tone maker. We're going to build it into iTunes, and you can make ring tones from many songs available on iTunes, including some songs you've already purchased."
Jobs compared iTunes ring tones to the competition, which cost up to $2.49. "Our ring tones, make 'em yourself, you pay another 99 cents to make the ring tone," he said.
Jobs demonstrated how the new feature works using Aretha Franklin's classic soul number "Respect." All of the songs on the iTunes Store that are "ringtonable" will feature a bell icon column in the music list. You click on the bell, the ring tone maker pops up, and you can click and drag to find the part of the song you want to use as a ring tone. iTunes creates a new file in the ring tone folder, and a new tab in Tunes then lets you decide what to sync to your iPhone.
Jobs played "Give Peace a Chance," then added, "That's [for] when NBC calls," referring to Apple's recent dispute with the TV network, which said it will end its partnership to publish shows on the iTunes Store in December.
iPodnews
Jobs said that Apple has sold 110 million iPods to date. "The place when the sales curve is strongest is the holiday season," said Jobs. "We're approaching the holiday 2007 season, and we want to get ready.
"Today we're going to refresh or replace every product in the lineup," said Jobs.
The iPod Suffle is being updated with "some really nice new colors," said Jobs. Apple is also adding a Product(red) Shuffle model, with proceeds going to help fight diseases in Africa.
"Now let's move on to something more substantial: the iPod Nano," said Jobs.
The iPod Nano is the most popular music player in history, said Jobs.
People love it, he added, but Apple wanted to make it better based on customer feedback. New features of the redesigned iPod Nano include the ability to watch video on a larger, brighter display. The new iPod Nano also features Cover Flow, the ability to scroll through album artwork visually. What's more, the new Nano also has games support, more storage features, and a full metal design.
The redesigned iPod Nano comes in five colors — red, black, silver, blue, and green. "It's incredibly tiny, it's incredibly thin," said Jobs.
The iPod Nano now includes a 2.0-inch display that features the same resolution as the previous-generation full-sized iPod: 320 x 240 pixels.
"We've achieved this with a screen with the highest pixel density we've ever shipped: 204 ppi," explained Jobs. "And the screen is just gorgeous. When you see it, you're going to really love it."
The user interface has been enhanced on the iPod Nano — the left side has the traditional iPod menu, and on the right, a preview of what you're selecting. Jobs also indicated that the new iPod Nano ships with three games; Vortex and Sudoku were both named specifically.
Jobs demonstrated the iPod Nano playing video by watching an episode of The Daily Show featuring John Hodgman, the actor who appears as the PC in Apple's "Mac and PC" television ads.
Jobs said the new iPod Nano provides 24 hours of audio and 5 hours of video playback on a single battery charge.
The redesigned iPod Nano comes in two versions: a 4GB version in silver, for $149, and 8GB version in colors, for $199.
"These new Nanos have left our factories already. They shipped Wednesday, they're on planes, they should be in stores by this weekend," said Jobs.
"'A little video for everyone' is our new line."
The "classic" iPod
"Now the iPod's got a funny name," mused Jobs. "It's just called 'the iPod' because it was the first one. We thought, 'It's time to give it a name.' We're going to call it the iPod Classic."
The new iPod still features a click wheel, and it's now a full metal design in silver and black. The low-end iPod classic (at 80GB) is now thinner than the 30GB thin model that preceded it. Jobs claims the new iPod gets 30 hours of audio playback and 5 hours of video playback on a single charge.
Like the iPod Nano, the new iPod Classic features an enhanced user interface.
Apple is also offering a model that features 160GB of storage.
"This boggles the mind," said Jobs for emphasis. "The first iPod put 1,000 songs in your pocket. This new iPod puts 40,000 songs in your pocket. It's amazing."
The new 80GB model costs $249, while the 160GB model costs $349, with availability beginning Wednesday.
The iPod Touch
"You know, when we , we said it was the best iPod ever. And iPhone owners agree with us. It's incredible, with its multitouch UI, its incredible album artwork and video, it is ," said Jobs. "And people have been wondering, when are we going to bring this tech to the iPod? The answer is, we're going to do it today, and this is what the product looks like."
8mm thinner, according to Jobs, who said, "We think it's one of the Seven Wonders of the World."
The iPod Touch sports a 3.5-inch widescreen display, and along its bottom run music, video, and photo icons. "Just like the iPhone, this is the best way to share photos on a portable device ever," said Jobs proudly.
The iPod Touch's button-driven interface also showed icons for a calculator, contacts, clock, calendar, and settings icons. What's more, the new device has Wi-Fi — the iPod Touch is the first iPod to feature wireless networking capabilities, with support for 802.11b and 802.11g networks.
"Others have done this and have failed," said Jobs, referring to wireless networking — and perhaps making a casual swipe at . "We think we know why it's failed. What's the problem with adding Wi-Fi? Part is getting on Wi-Fi itself."
"When you're at home, you might need a password. When you're in the office, you might have a password," said Jobs. "But everywhere in between can be challenging. You go to any hotel, and to log in, they throw up a Web page.
"Portable devices don't know how to deal with Web pages. You go to an airport, you'll see a Web page. Even walking through Stanford University, to use their Wi-Fi, you have to log into a Web page." The solution, said Jobs, was to add Safari to the iPod Touch.
"So you can view all those Web pages, zoom in, log into any Wi-Fi network pretty much. But beside that, you get an incredible Web browser … the best Web browser on any mobile platform," said Jobs. YouTube is also supported.
The iPod Touch's battery lasts for 22 hours of audio playback and 5 hours of video playback per charge, according to Apple.
The iPod Touch is a worldwide product launch, said Jobs. It's the first touch product Apple has shipped outside the United States, and it's been localized into many languages.
The iPod Touch is coming in two configurations: 8GB and 16GB, for $299 and $399, respectively. Both models are expected to be available "in just a few weeks," according to Jobs, who said that Apple will ship them in September, "in plenty of time for the holiday season."
One more thing
"But there is one more thing, if you'll bear with us," said Jobs.
"You might have noticed that there's an empty spot on that dock of the new iPod Touch," said Jobs. "What could that possibly be for? Well, it's for a new app we've written called the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store."
"'Finally,' some of you are saying," said Jobs. "It's so cool. So let's take a look at what it is."
Opening the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store displays four buttons: Features, Top Tens, Search, and Downloads. You can pick Top 10 songs from all of iTunes or only from specific genres. If you see a song you like, you can preview it, and if you like it, you can tap it to buy it using a Buy Now button.
You'll download the song, and the next time you dock your iPod Touch to your computer, it will sync back to iTunes.
Jobs demonstrated the new software's capability by buying John Lennon's "Imagine." The song was visible in a playlist on the iPod Touch called "Downloads."
"Isn't this incredible?" asked Jobs.
The iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store is available internationally in every country where Apple operates an iTunes Store, said Jobs.
"And we're going to bring it to the iPhone," he added. Jobs said the new software will be delivered to iPhone users via an iPhone software update later this month.
Apple and Starbucks partnership
"There's even one more incredible part of this," said Jobs, who revealed that Apple has been working on this for two years. "I cannot tell you how much pleasure it gives me to announce we've got a great partnership with Starbucks today."
Jobs called Starbucks "an incredible phenomenon in our culture" and added that a lot of Apple employees are great customers. Apple wanted to combine iPods and their love of music with Starbucks' coffee and love of music.
"In the new iTunes Wi-Fi Store, when you get near a participating Starbucks, automatically a fifth button is going to pop up in the store with a Starbucks button," he said.
"You will know what songs they're playing in Starbucks, and you can buy it with one tap of your finger. And if you just missed it, you can look at the last 10 songs they've played. They're going to program some cool music for us in terms of their collections," Jobs said.
HP launches five iPaq models (InfoWorld)
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The 910 and 610 use the Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 Professional operating system.
Although the PDA market has been shrinking quarter over quarter for several years now, converged mobile devices (PDAs that include Wi-Fi and cellular) are seeing robust growth, according to Ramon Llamas, a senior analyst with IDC.
"These are mini computers and for some it is a necessary enterprise device," Llamas said.
Although pricing is not yet firm, the 5.15-ounce iPaq 910 will sell for about $599 and will include four separate radios, a quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and tri-band UMTS cellular chip, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth, and a GPS radio for navigation.
For business users, the 910 includes a full QWERTY keyboard, Windows Mobile applications, and the Enterprise Mobility Suite, which is a set of hosted management applications. It also includes software compatible with Cisco's unified communications protocols, CCX (Cisco Compatibility Extensions). The display is a 2.46-inch TFT screen.
The iPaq 610 is also a converged device. It features four radios, including the quad-band cellular found in the 910. The major difference between the two devices is the 2.8-inch rectangular display, more suited for Web browsing and GPS. But the 610 lacks the QWERTY keyboard of the 910.
The iPaq 310, dubbed the Travel Companion, is a trip planner and a PDA as opposed to an enterprise device. It features only two radios, GPS, and Bluetooth, and it runs on Windows CE 5.0. The 6.6-ounce device has a 4.3-inch display and 128MB of SDRAM. GPS software gives user turn-by-turn directions with spoken word as well as on-screen display. Price is expected to be between $399 and $449.
The HP iPaq 210 model is dubbed Enterprise Handheld and includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It does not include a cellular radio or a GPS radio. Memory is 64MB, and it comes with Office Mobile, Outlook, IE Mobile, and Windows Media Player Mobile. The iPaqe 210 is priced around $400 and uses Windows Mobile 6 Classic as the OS.
Finally, the iPaq 110 is HP's least expensive device, priced at about $200. Dubbed the Classic handheld, the 110 includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth with a smaller 3.5-inch screen. Included is the same 210 application software.
The iPaq 910 and 610 will keep HP in the hot converged device market game. However, holding the No. 2 market share spot in the dying handheld market — defined by IDC as traditional PDAs without connectivity — may be somewhat meaningless, especially given that Dell, the fourth-place market share leader, has dropped out.
Traditional handhelds are a shrinking market, Llamas said.
Startup software maker Netbooks takes on Intuit
Startup software maker Netbooks takes on Intuit
By Jim Finkle Reuters - 1 hour 6 minutes ago
BOSTON (Reuters) - Privately held NetBooks started selling a line of computer programs designed to help run small businesses on Wednesday, taking on QuickBooks provider Intuit and NetSuite, which has filed to go public.
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Netbooks' software is accessed via Web browsers and hosted on servers maintained by the company, which is based in Rohnert Park, California.
It also said it raised $6.9 million (3.4 million pounds) in capital from CMEA Ventures, Integral Capital and other advisors.
NetBooks provides accounting software along with programs for managing sales and marketing, inventory, purchasing, shipping and manufacturing.
The company was founded by Ridgely Evers, who helped lead development of Intuit's QuickBooks accounting software.
NetBooks is one of dozens of companies developing software that is accessed via Web browsers, the biggest of which is Salesforce.com, which sells software for managing marketing activities.
Its most direct competitor may be NetSuite, which is majority owned by Oracle founder and billionaire Larry Ellison.
Germany's SAP, the world's biggest maker of software for managing businesses, is also working on a line of Web-based software for small and medium-sized companies. So far, SAP has not said much about the product, but it is scheduled to talk about it at a meeting later this month in New York.
Other rivals include Microsoft and Sage Group
Evers said his products are unique because they have the broadest functionality among Web-based products designed for "true small businesses." He defines that market as small companies that have no aspirations of growing much bigger.
NetBooks, which does aspire to grow into a much larger company, uses software from NetSuite, according to Evers.
He also runs a family business that sells gourmet foods, including olive oils, which uses software from NetBooks.
(Reporting by Jim Finkle)
Newest spy gadget: social networking (AP)
But the U.S. intelligence community is taking a page from popular online hangouts like Facebook and News Corp.’s MySpace to help encourage operatives to share information. In December, agency leaders are launching a social-networking site just for spooks.
The classified “A-Space” ultimately will grow to include blogs, searchable databases, libraries of reports, collaborative word processing and other tools to help analysts quickly trade, update and edit information.
It comes on the heels of the year-old Intellipedia, a Web site modeled after the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Intellipedia has been gaining traction among the intelligence agencies and already has nearly 30,000 posted articles and 4,800 edits added every workday.
Although A-Space will be built with commercially available software, organizers are quick to dismiss any criticism about security, saying all sensitive data will be stored behind a thicket of classified safeguards that they are developing themselves.
The social-networking efforts, led by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, are emerging as the nation’s intelligence community comes under renewed criticism for a lack of cooperation and communication — something a new internal CIA report said contributed to the information breakdown before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Aside from simply being able to share documents back and forth, experts who are in the same field but work for different agencies could meet each other virtually and swap ideas and information directly. Experts say the current procedures for sharing information is so cumbersome that such communication is now impossible.
“It’s just a better way to build and grow that network so that improved analysis can come out the other end,” said Robert Cardillo, deputy director of analysis for the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Organizers acknowledge it may be difficult to erase generations of territorial tendencies and prevent spats among the country’s 16 intelligence agencies, which often want credit for their own discoveries.
But they hope the influx of younger operatives — half the intelligence analysts employed by the U.S. government have been on the job for no more than five years — will help shelve old feuds and embrace Web tools already in widespread use.
“It’s a way to build the social network for all analysts,” said Mike Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analytic transformation and technology, who is leading the initiative. “We put more eyes on more problems.”
Development of the $5 million project began in June, and a pilot version will be available in December, with features to be added over the next year. Ultimately, the system may grow to include an unclassified network for use by state and local law enforcement and even some foreign agencies.
Classified information will only be available to individuals with the right security clearance and site minders will work to sniff out inappropriate use, much the way credit card companies look for fraudulent charges.
For example, A-Space will be designed to detect if an expert in Southeast Asian militaries is running inappropriate queries on Latin American drug cartels.
“We’re hoping that people will give us the benefit of the doubt,” Wertheimer said.
But three months before A-Space is to go live, there’s ample skepticism.
Richard L. Russell, a former CIA analyst who teaches at the National Defense University, says the government needs to focus on building better analysis and human intelligence, not fancy tools.
“You may have a great technological infrastructure for managing information, but if you put garbage into it, the output will be garbage,” he said.
Others said the initiative is a giant leap for the three-letter agencies that find themselves stumbling to share information through bureaucratic channels and cumbersome firewalls.
“A site that’s open to all 16 intelligence agencies, that allows them to chat more freely, I think is a darn good idea and may help them get around some of these issues,” said Donald C. Daniel, a security studies professor at Georgetown University. “But it may be hit or miss.”
Experts say the service will only be as effective as those who use it. And with many older workers puzzled by their younger colleagues’ obsessive use of Facebook and its ilk, full-blown use could take time.
Mark Lowenthal, president of The Intelligence & Security Academy and the government’s former assistant director of central intelligence for analysis and production, admits he’s baffled by social-networking sites and isn’t sure if A-Space is the ultimate solution to fixing problems in the agencies.
But he believes the proposal has merit, especially as baby boomers retire and are replaced by younger analysts.
“Clearly, we don’t always behave like a community so anything you can do to help foster that to a degree is a good thing,” he said. “We want to do better. Anybody who’s dealt with adapting technology to the intelligence community will tell you that the intelligence community has not been brilliant in catching up.”
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On the Net:
USA Today distributes news by ‘widget’ (AP)
Widgets are a Web accessory that people are using in rapidly growing numbers to jazz up their home pages, blogs and profiles on social networking platforms like Facebook or MySpace. Users of Microsoft Corp.’s new Vista operating system can also put widgets on the desktop of their computers.
Big Internet companies like Yahoo Inc. offer large varieties of widgets — Google Inc. calls them gadgets — that give snapshots of local weather, games and sports results or display pictures, for example. A startup called Slide Inc., a major provider of widgets, last month began offering the ability to place ads on them.
Kinsey Wilson, executive editor of USA Today, said in an interview Wednesday that the newspaper began offering three kinds of widgets this week at and has plans to offer four more.
They’re all aimed at making money through advertising offered on them, though no advertisers have signed up so far, USA Today spokeswoman Alex Nicholson said. USA Today’s widgets are compatible with many blogging platforms and social networking sites, including Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, Typepad and Google Inc.’s iGoogle.
USA Today’s first three widgets are all related to travel. The ones to be offered in coming weeks will have news on pop culture, top headlines and celebrities and informational graphics like those that run on the paper’s front page.
USA Today is the largest newspaper in the country and is owned by Gannett Co., the biggest U.S. newspaper publisher.
J.B. Holston, CEO of the Denver-based company NewsGator Technologies Inc., which is licensing widget technology to USA Today, said his company also has created widgets for The Miami Herald, owned by McClatchy Co., and the San Jose Mercury News, owned by MediaNews Group Inc.
But Holston said USA Today was the first national newspaper to offer a widget that can be detached from a Web page and inserted onto a personalized page, and it was the first to use widgets that employ Flash, technology that allows users to see animation and other advanced effects.
In March, The New York Times started offering users of iGoogle a widget that displays a weekly crossword puzzle. It also offers widgets on its customizable home page, , which went live two weeks ago, and plans to announce a news quiz widget for Facebook, among others in the works.
Newspapers are increasingly looking for new ways to engage readers online as more people fire up their computers to get the information, news, classified advertising and entertainment that are the mainstays of the newspaper business.
By breaking up pieces of USA Today’s daily output and allowing users to pick and choose how and when they access them, the newspaper is making it possible for Web users to consume only certain parts of it, and not necessarily on the newspaper’s own site and without buying a printed copy of the newspaper.
Many newspapers and other online publishers have already embraced another form of online distribution called RSS feeds, which people can use to see updated headlines in places like a MyYahoo page from Yahoo Inc. But those feeds are largely text-only and more difficult to sell advertising around.
Business 2.0 magazine shutting down (AP)
Although the San Francisco-based magazine’s death notice wasn’t delivered until Wednesday in a staff meeting, Business 2.0’s troubles were widely known. The magazine’s total advertising pages plunged 34 percent during the first six months of this year, according to statistics compiled by the Publishers Information Bureau.
Like many other print periodicals, Business 2.0 has been hurt by a shift of advertising to the Internet as consumers spend more of their time surfing the Web and less reading magazines and newspapers.
As Business 2.0’s revenue shriveled, Time — part of Time Warner Inc. — had been seeking buyers for the magazine. Dissatisfied with the offers it received in recent weeks, Time decided pull the plug and transfer some of the 9-year-old magazine’s top employees to the company’s main business title, Fortune.
“We looked for the best scenario for Business 2.0 — one that would nurture the spirit of the brand’s unique coverage and reporting,” said Time spokeswoman Danielle Perissi.
Business 2.0’s final issue is scheduled to hit the newsstands this month.
Fortune offered jobs to Josh Quittner, Business 2.0’s editor since 2002, and 10 other employees, Perissi said. The magazine’s remaining 18 workers will lose their jobs, although Time is looking for positions for them at some of its other magazines.
Business 2.0 was among a cluster of specialty magazines that sprang up in San Francisco and nearby Silicon Valley during the 1990s to cover the high-tech boom that were fueled by advertising from brash Internet startups promising to change the world.
To get their ambitious messages out, dot-com entrepreneurs poured millions of dollars of venture capital into advertising while mature high-tech companies joined the mania by boosting their marketing budgets. Besides Business 2.0, the advertising blitz enriched the Industry Standard, Red Herring and Upside.
The tide turned in 2001 when the flow of venture capital dried up. The downturn wiped out the Industry Standard, Upside and Red Herring, which has since been revived under a new owner.
Business 2.0 appeared headed for the scrap heap in 2001, too, until Time bought it for a reported $68 million and folded its own high-tech magazine, eCompany Now, into Business 2.0.
Although it weathered the dot-com bust, Business 2.0 never again approached the advertising heights of the boom.
The magazine ended up with a paid readership of just more than 600,000, according to the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Some of those readers were loyal enough to form a Business 2.0 support group on the social network , but that show of affection wasn’t enough to spare the magazine.
Review: After smoke clears, FiOS a hit (AP)
In fact, ever since the smoke cleared, I’ve enjoyed more than 100 TV channels, a responsive remote and fast Internet connection that rarely falters. If the installers figure out how to tell where power lines run in a wall, the service is nearly flawless.
Verizon Communications Inc., for those keeping score, is a telephone company that’s been branching out into other things, such as cable TV. Cable companies, meanwhile, are broadening their offerings to include high-speed Internet and telephone service.
Verizon, which serves 28 states and Washington, D.C., is spending $23 billion to make fiber-optic connections — which it calls FiOS — available to 18 million homes by 2010. By bypassing the old copper phone lines, the company has much more bandwidth available than anyone else. (AT&T Inc. also is upgrading its service with fiber, though the cables do not extend all the way to each home.)
While it’s been available where I live for a while, it wasn’t until I moved within the Philadelphia suburbs that the company made me a pitch that was too good to refuse: All my telecom services — landline, cell phone, cable and Internet — on one bill.
The package is about $200, $10 a month more than it used to cost me to buy cable from Comcast, and my landline, Internet and wireless services from Verizon or Verizon Wireless. But I figured that $10 was worth it for faster Internet speeds of up to 5 megabits per second downstream (and 2 Mbps upstream) and 150 free cable channels — dozens more than I was getting from Comcast. Verizon threw in a voice mail box, caller identification service and unlimited calling with no extra charge.
And, I’ll admit, I was more than ready to stick it in Comcast’s eye after years of consistent 5 percent annual price hikes, mediocre equipment and a remote that barely worked.
I knew I was taking a risk, but how bad can cable TV delivered by a phone company be? Pretty good, as it turns out.
Though my 26-inch Samsung set couldn’t take advantage of the service’s high-definition offerings, the standard-definition picture quality was at least as good as offered by Comcast.
Verizon’s remote and set-top box provided work amazingly well, compared to the Comcast equipment I was using. All the usual channels appear to be there, plus some. On the sports front, I’ve gained several new versions of ESPN, I now have the NFL Network, and I didn’t lose Comcast SportsNet (the two rivals inked a deal letting Verizon carry CSN, home of many local Phillies, Sixers and Flyers games, last year).
We’ve also benefited from channel inflation in home improvement and cooking networks, and gained a slew of new nature, science and history-related channels, many of which I’d never heard of. One, DIY, repeats some of our favorite shows from other networks, letting us catch programs we used to miss. We’ve also gained children’s channels such as Noggin.
On the Internet side the service has been exemplary. Whereas our old DSL modem had to be reset frequently, I’ve only had to reset our FiOS modem once. It may be a tad slower than a cable connection, but unless you’re downloading gobs of big files, who’s the wiser? It’s more than fast enough for Webkinz and the occasional cartoon or game.
The landline works and sounds just fine, though it’s not your grandfather’s phone service — power isn’t supplied over the network. Verizon does provide an eight-hour backup battery to help you through blackouts (we’ve fortunately not experienced any yet).
There was no change to our cell phone service, which we’ve had through Verizon Wireless for several years now (for the record, the coverage in Bucks County, Pa., is better than Cingular, our previous provider).
One complaint is the lack of documentation. I’m not normally a big manual reader, but a simple channel guide would have been nice (I’ve since found one online). And to use the voice mail service that came with the FiOS phone connection, I had to call an operator, then an 800 number, then suffer through several transfers before finding someone who could give me basic instructions (such as which number to dial to retrieve voice mail messages, for instance).
And there is the small matter of installation. When Verizon runs fiber to your house, the company needs to install a box on an inside wall. It was in drilling through a wall to connect that box to a fiber conduit that our installer hit an electrical wire. That knocked the power out and left our electrical box — and the front of the house — smoking.
The technicians compounded this error by insisting that we pay for the electrical repairs, then bill them. We’d be reimbursed in 30 days, they assured us. My wife was having none of that. Verizon’s insurance company cut us a check for the $2,650 repair within days.
We got a brand-new electrical box out of the deal, for free. But our electrician tells us ours was not the first botched Verizon installation he’s been called out to fix.
For its part, Verizon was very apologetic. That’s fine, but I want to know how many other people have had similar installation problems.
Very few, Verizon spokeswoman Sharon Shaffer assured me.
“This particular occurrence and the extent of the damage is rare,” Shaffer said.
The technician did apparently get a talking-to.
“The training on installation procedures was reviewed with the technician,” Shaffer said.
I’m sure the our incident was rare, and all’s well that ends well, as far as I’m concerned.
Now, give me that remote.
___
On the Net:
Verizon:
Microsoft Cuts Zune Price as Apple Ups Ante for iPods (PC World)
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The Zune device from Microsoft now costs US$199, $50 less than its original price tag. Microsoft announced the price cut on its Zune Insider blog on Tuesday, a day before Apple was rumored to be introducing new iPod models at an event in San Francisco, which the company did indeed do.
Naturally, Microsoft did not mention Zune's arch rival in its blog post, saying that the price cut had been in the works for some time.
"It's part of the normal product lifecycle, something we've had on the books for months," according to the blog post. "We just got some research back and customer satisfaction with the 30GB device is really high (around 94 percent) and we expect even more consumers will now want to discover the Zune experience at the new lower price."
With the new iPods introduced by Apple CEO Steve Jobs in San Francisco on Wednesday, that prediction doesn't seem too likely. The new iPod Touch that Jobs unveiled is the first iPod with WiFi capability, one of the differentiators between the current iPod lines and the Zune device, which was launched with WiFi last November. iPod Touch also is similar in look and feel to the recently launched Apple iPhone, and features touchscreen controls that are making Apple's phone/multimedia device combination a hit with customers.
In other bad news for Zune, Apple on Wednesday also has cut the price on its 80GB iPod from $349 to $249, which makes it only a fraction less expensive than the 30GB Zune. It also has introduced a 160GB iPod for $349. According to Jobs, Apple has sold 110 million iPods to date.
There are rumors that, to compete more aggressively with Apple, Microsoft will introduce new Zune devices by the holidays with new features and form factors, but so far the company has declined to divulge specific details. There have also been hints from executives that an iPhone rival is in the works. Microsoft has said from the beginning that Zune is a long-term investment, and expects it will take some time before the device will be a worthy competitor to iPod, which has a five-year headstart and Apple's brand power behind it.
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