Business Industry

PC gaming fans will want to take note of a major move by Dell this week: according to reports, the company will be dropping the majority of its powerful XPS line of systems. The muscular PCs are meant exclusively for gaming purposes, some even ... marketed for specific titles (like the XPS 'World of Warcraft' laptop). The move is part of a broad attempt by Dell to resurrect its fortunes in the computer retail market. The popular online seller recently fell behind long time competitor Hewlett Packard, losing its grip on first place in the U.S. Though Dell will continue to offer a few of its lower- ... (view more)

Jajah just landed a deal to manage VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calls for Yahoo! Messenger. Beginning in the third quarter of 2008, the web-based telephony company will add the Internet portal's 97 million users to its own base of 10 million ... Jajah customers. Whether or not users will notice the difference is unclear. (Source: marketwire.com ) While both services use pre-paid credits, the pricing system is slightly different. Yahoo, for example, charges less than Jajah for U.S. long distance, while the reverse is true for international calls. Of course, neither service can compare to ... (view more)

Yahoo posted its first quarter earnings for 2008 on Tuesday, exceeding expectations by a small margin. The company posted a 9 percent increase in revenue for a total 1.81 billion dollars. This would seem to give strength to the Internet portal in ... its ongoing confrontation with Microsoft, which is hoping to buy Yahoo and become a stronger online competitor against Google. (Source: nytimes.com ) Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang made claims earlier in the month that Microsoft's current offer of $31 per share substantially undervalues the company, and refused to sell at that price. While Yang now has some ... (view more)

Rumors emerged earlier this week that Sony would begin offering a video download service for the Playstation 3 (PS3). The company is also reportedly in talks with the major studios and television networks, providing the third incarnation of the ... service after the abysmal failures of Movielink (sold to Blockbuster) and Sony Connect (recently discontinued). Has Sony already squandered its chances? Its main competitor, Microsoft's Xbox 360, already delivers movie and television shows with its Xbox Live service. Then there are the other set-top boxes such as Apple TV and Tivo. (Source: slashdot. ... (view more)

MySpace, Orkut, Bebo, Friendster, Twitter and of course Facebook have changed the Internet. By leading the Web 2.0 charge, social networks have had a big influence on how we interact online. Last week, Google announced that it would join with Yahoo ... and MySpace to form the Open Social Foundation. The new group will work together to promote the application programming interface (API) OpenSocial. APIs are the source codes that programmers use to develop applications for use on social networking sites such as Facebook's SuperWall and Scrabulous. (Source: news.com ) The idea is to promote a ... (view more)

Last week, AOL announced that it would acquire Bebo, the third most popular social-networking site in the United States. The deal is worth $850 million, a bargain when considering that many companies, such as News Corp., Facebook, and Google are ... looking to the medium as the next big thing for advertising dollars. (Source: nytimes.com ) While the nobility of Silicon Valley have high hopes, no one has really found the 'magic formula' to turn social networking into a cash cow. If any company has the ability to monetize connecting with friends it may be AOL and Bebo. AIM is the dominant Instant ... (view more)

Over the last several years, Google has been slowly sucking up advertising dollars that might normally be spent on television. Now, the six largest cable companies want to stop that. To do so, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Cox ... Communications, Charter Communications and Bright House Networks are planning a joint venture to allow advertisers to purchase interactive and custom ads across their cable systems. Collectively, the companies will invest about $150 million in the project. (Source: nytimes.com ) The announcement of the cable company's "Project Canoe" comes only a week after ... (view more)

Search site Ask.com -- formerly Ask Jeeves -- is to ditch 8% of its workforce and re-evaluate its strategy. It seems the site will be revamped from a general search site to one aimed specifically at married women, with an emphasis on lifestyle ... issues. New CEO Jim Safka says research found 65% of the site's users are female, compared with 48% across all search engines. The site is particularly popular with women in their late 30s living in the Midwest and Southeast. (Source: reuters.com ) Ask is currently the fifth biggest search engine, but has a mere 4.5% market share, far behind Google's 58 ... (view more)

Last week, Time Warner's new CEO Jeff Bewkes confirmed the corporation would separate AOL's Internet dial-up division from the company's advertising and content business. This leads analysts to believe that Time Warner may sell one or both of its ... AOL divisions.(Source: cnn.com ) "We're working on separating AOL's access and audience businesses so we can run them independently. This should significantly increase AOL's strategic options," Bewkes said during a conference call with investors. AOL's subscription business has been faltering since the Web 2.0 explosion, and rival firms ... (view more)

Get ready to pay for Internet usage by the gigabyte rather than the flat monthly access fee you're accustomed to. At least, that could be the outcome if a new pricing test by Time Warner's RoadRunner broadband service is deemed as worthy. The ... company is the fifth-largest Internet service provider in the U.S., however, its initial test will be constrained to subscribers in Beaumont, Texas. (Sources: ISP Planet and Internetnews.com ) In their new price scheme, a user's monthly fees would depend on how much bandwidth they used during the month. A spokesperson for Time Warner has explained that ... (view more)