Yesterday, the New York Times reported that New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission is considering the installation of tablet computers in the back of taxicabs, and that Square — the Jack Dorsey-led mobile payments start-up that nabbed $100 million in funding from top-notch investors last year — will throw its hat in the ring
HP’s quarterly results are out and the early judgement of investors is that it was a mixed bag. While per-share earnings at 92 cents, beat the consensus of 87 cents, sales were light by a bout $700 million. It was a tough quarter, which is something that HP executives will likely remind us all about during the conference call that’s
Hewlett Packard just reported quarterly earnings, and the results show that HP earned 92 cents a share on sales of $30 billion. The EPS number exceeded the expectations of analysts, who had anticipated HP would report per-share earnings of 87 cents. But sales at $30 billion even were light of the $30.7 billion Wall Street had expected. Sales of
Google Inc. filed an application last week to provide video service to residents of Kansas City, Mo., according to state records, setting the stage for the Web giant to offer a cable-TV-like package in addition to the high-speed Internet service it plans to market there later this year. The video service, if approved, would move the Mountain View,
Last night, ABC’s “Nightline” broadcast its unprecedented look at Apple’s Chinese manufacturing partner, Foxconn, which for years has been plagued by accusations of labor abuse and poor working conditions. And while it was certainly an illuminating look at Foxconn’s suicide net-festooned Shenzhen, China, factory complex
As we said would happen, Rapportive has been acquired by LinkedIn. Rapportive CEO Rahul Vohra said in a blog post today that Rapportive would continue to be available for Gmail users as a plugin that overlays information about their contacts inside their inbox, as it is today. Rapportive has drawn many passionate users — it hadn’t
Two makes a trend, as far as I am concerned, so here is movie director Sam Mendes — following in the digital footsteps of “The Hobbit” helmer Peter Jackson — making a video blog for the latest James Bond film, “Skyfall.” It is a much shorter video, but presumably there will be more. I am a giant Bond fan, so I
T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS Communications Inc. are pushing the Federal Communications Commission to block Verizon Wireless’ plan to buy wireless airwaves from a group of cable companies for $3.9 billion. T-Mobile — which just months ago was pushing antitrust authorities to approve its failed deal to sell itself to AT&T Inc. —
Looks like the basketball players of tomorrow will boast that they’ve got data-tracking game. A new Nike+ “pressure sensor” is coming to Nike basketball and training shoes. The sensors will track data about wearers’ movements and transmit it wirelessly to their iPhones. The enhanced basketball shoes are meant to track the
Allegations of standards-essential patent abuse are piling up against Motorola Mobility. This morning, Microsoft said it has filed a complaint with the European Commission against the company alleging it is not offering some of its standards-essential patents on FRAND (fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory) terms. “In legal proceedings on
Comcast’s new Netflix killer can’t be a Netflix killer, because most of the people in the U.S. can’t use it. Streampix, the Web video service it is launching this week, will only be available to Comcast’s 22 million cable TV subscribers. But if Comcast wants to, it can change that overnight, as The Wall Street
A day after Dell reported quarterly earnings that fell 18 percent, analysts are slashing their ratings on its stock today, which opened lower by nearly 7 percent as markets opened in New York. Dell’s earnings were 51 cents and missed the consensus of analysts by a penny; the company also said that revenue would decline by 7 percent in the
Apple and the Beatles have put out ringtones based on 27 of the band’s songs. Which is a good time to remind people that Apple’s iTunes store has had an unprecedented year-plus exclusive on the band’s digital library, which began way back in November 2010.
As Beijing bureau chief for CNN in the late 1990′s, Rebecca MacKinnon witnessed first-hand the arrival of the Internet in China and the Chinese government’s struggle to control a technology some predicted would help bring about the end of Communist Party rule. A decade later, as Ms. MacKinnon documents in her recently released book “Consent
Sony’s new handheld gaming product, the PlayStation Vita, goes on sale today in Europe and the U.S. Following its initial launch in Japan in December, the device was plagued by some reported bugs, including crashes and gameplay lags, but Sony quickly issued a software update to address the issues. As The Wall Street Journal’s Katie
AT&T’s failed takeover of T-Mobile cost the company dearly — $4.2 billion in breakup fees paid out in cash and spectrum rights. Turns out it cost CEO Randall Stephenson, as well — $2.08 million in bonuses. In a new filing with the SEC, AT&T’s board called Stephenson out for the collapse of what would have been a
The Web ad industry has gotten crazily complicated. But advertisers’ goals remain as simple as ever: Put their messages in front of people who will care about them. Ad tech firm Resonate has a simple pitch along those lines: It says it can figure out what different groups of Internet users care about, and where to find them on the Web. The
Our response to date as an industry has been as equally inefficient and in many cases emotional. “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone” is not much of a business model. – From MediaNews Group and Journal Register Company CEO John Paton’s speaking notes for an address to the Canadian Journalism Foundation
Wheelz, a college campus-based service that matches car owners with borrowers, has raised $13.7 million in Series A funding. What’s particularly interesting is the lead investor: Zipcar. Wheelz is basically a peer-to-peer version of Zipcar — one of a few such companies that have sprung up in the past couple years. Wheelz CEO Jeff
The RSA security conference takes place in San Francisco next week, and though I’ve never attended it, and won’t be doing so this year, I know enough about the state of the IT security business to predict one thing that’s almost certainly part of the experience: Many vendors of security products will speak loud and long about why
Portable gaming devices have plenty of reason to sulk in the corner. The job they once dominated—rescuing people from boredom while on the go—is now done by smartphones and devices like the iPod Touch. Smartphones offer casual games like “Angry Birds” and “Words with Friends” that cost little or nothing to download, and
Dell Inc. said its fourth-quarter profit dropped 18 percent, as supply constraints for disk drives and weak demand from public-sector customers offset a shift to more profitable products for the computer maker. The Round Rock, Texas, company on Tuesday reported that revenue rose just 2 percent in the fiscal period ended Feb. 3, which included an
Someone certainly wants the world to believe that Cisco Systems is getting out of the business of selling TV set-top boxes and spent what appears to have been a busy weekend telling reporters that it’s happening. How then to explain Cisco’s strong denials of an interest in selling — and its reaffirmation of love for — the
Once again, AllThingsD is taking a roundabout path to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Last year, we made a stop in London to hear Nokia announce its big tie-up with Microsoft. This year, we’ve traveled to Nokia’s home country, Finland, to see how that partnership is going and to get a closer look at a company that remains one of
Proview's Shenzhen HeadquartersProview, the bankrupt company embroiled in a pitched battle with Apple over the Chinese rights to the iPad trademark, says it’s willing to negotiate out of court to reach a settlement. On the eve of a hearing that would determine whether or not an injunction against iPad sales in Shanghai is upheld,
Microsoft may well be working on a version of Office for iPad, but it’s not the one detailed in a report today from The Daily. Nor will it soon be submitted to Apple for approval. “The Daily story is based on inaccurate rumors and speculation,” Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw told AllThingsD. “We have no further
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. plans to take private its Hong Kong-listed Alibaba.com Ltd. in a U.S. $2.3 billion deal to shore up the e-commerce portal. The Chinese company, which currently owns 73% of Alibaba.com, said Tuesday that the move would free it from “the pressures” of having a listed company. The deal appears unrelated to a
Comcast Corp. is taking aim at Netflix Inc., unveiling its own streaming-video service that will give existing Comcast video customers a similar selection of old TV shows and movies over the Web. The Philadelphia-based cable operator said Tuesday that the new service would be called Xfinity Streampix, and will be bundled with certain tiers of
After running into some early opposition in the nation’s capital, Uber, a technology company that allows users to order a car service from a smartphone app, applied the full-court press in Washington, D.C., on President’s Day. In the video below, the San Francisco-based start-up shows how a few lucky Uber users received the
It has taken months longer than Research In Motion promised it would, but the company’s BlackBerry PlayBook finally has native email. This morning, RIM released PlayBook OS 2, the long-awaited update to its tablet operating system that adds a number of key features which were inexplicably absent from its first iteration. Top among them:
