This is the big news day of the year. Steve Jobs hasresigned as CEO of Apple. Apple is the world largest public company. Steve has handed over the chief executive job to Apple COO Tim Cook.
This news has been coming for a while, as Steve Jobs has been struggling a lot over the last few years with his declining health. Now he has made the very tough decision to step aside and let someone take over the huge responsibility that is the CEO of Apple.
On his resign, Steve Jobs sent the following letter to the Apple Board of Directors.
To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.
I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.
As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.
I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.
I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.
Sugru is a new silicone rubber that can be added to pretty much anything. Sugru was added to this camera and as you can see from the video it is now unbreakable. The only downsize is that is only lasts a few months, but im sure they will come up with a solution for it to last a lot longer. Very cool!
It has been announced that Google has acquired Motorola Mobility for $40.00 per share or $12.5 billion. This is Google’s largest acquisition with the aim to challenge Apple as a handset producer.
Larry Page CEO of Google had this to say of the acquisition:
“Motorola Mobility’s total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers. I look forward to welcoming Motorolans to our family of Googlers.”
Andy Rubin, Google’s senior vice president of mobile, said in a statement that the Android platform will remain open:
“Our vision for Android is unchanged, and Google remains firmly committed to Android as an open platform and a vibrant open source community. We will continue to work with all of our valued Android partners to develop and distribute innovative Android-powered devices.”
Im very surprised they didnt look at acquiring HTC.
Motorola is a great business and has over $3 billion in the bank. They also have 19,000 employees and produce set top boxes and phone accessories. It will be interesting to see how they can put both businesses together.
Spotify is on a roll at the moment. In only a few weeks they have signed up over 1.4 million US users, with 175,000 paying for the premium service.
This is amazing news for the music industry, because MOG, Rdio and other music streaming services have been having trouble gaining traction.
Spotify is all about conversion rates! The major labels want to see highest possible conversions to the premium service from the free option. In Europe Spotify has a conversion rate of 15% and so far in the US they are seeing 12.5%. Very promising signs for Spotify.
In very strange news it seems like Jack Dorsey is firing key players at Twitter. Dorsey is back in as the head of product at Twitter and he seems to be remove the original team that are closely affiliated with Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Jason Goldman. Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Jason Goldman left Twitter in the past few months to stat their own incubator project.
I dont understand why Dorsey is removing all these people when they have grown Twitter up from his idea. It seems like Dorsey has fallen out with Stone, Williams and Goldman and is trying to get the company to start fresh.
Im a huge believer that Twitter was only successful because of Williams and Stone!
Broadband speed is a funny thing – what gets advertised by Internet service providers isn’t always what ends up being delivered by the copper cable, fiber optic line or wireless signals that make it into your home. ISPs usually find a number of different scapegoats for the differences between advertised speeds and real-world performance, including gems like line quality, signal interference and network congestion, but with the advent of new data transmission technologies that are hitting the market, federal lawmakers are zeroing in on ensuring that providers won’t be able to hide behind these excuses indefinitely.
The reason the U.S. government has gotten involved in the potential regulation of wireless data transfer speeds is because next-generation 4G network providers have become notorious for their inconsistent bandwidth. The term “4G” has unfortunately transformed into a catch-all term that actually encompasses a wide variety of different data standards, with at least three different technologies having been adopted by major players in the American market. This has led to a divergence between the data speeds promised by the international 4G standard and what is actually being labeled as 4G in the United States.
Legislation has been introduced by U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo that would force wireless Internet service providers to clearly define the details of what their 4G service packages actually offer consumers. Called the Next Generation Wireless Disclosure Act, the guidelines would establish a requirement for clear labeling of transmission speed, network coverage and service reliability with each 4G product. This would eliminate the blanket “4G = fast” marketing mantra that has so far saturated wireless provider advertising. The pending pack of rules would also establish an FCC evaluation of actual data transmission speeds in order to give consumers an impartial yardstick against which to compare their options.
There are some free market advocates who would argue that federal involvement in the wireless data network business is an unwelcome intrusion. However, given the fact that 4G services are positioned as premium products that come with equally premium pricing, it is definitely in the best interests of consumers to have a clear idea of what they are actually paying for.
In many ways, the decision to regulate wireless speeds is similar to government policies which establish standards for the different grades of gasoline at the fuel pump, or the quality of various building and renovation materials – a set of guidelines against which each service provider can be fairly judged, and a tool to help wireless users choose the best ISP for their particular needs.
Author Jason Lancaster writes for InternetServiceProviders.org, a website that helps consumers find internet service in Utah and across the US and Canada.
The Huffington Post has finally launched their UK edition and I think it is going to be big. Here in the UK there are very few independent news sources, so expect the Huffington Post to be the main player in this market.
On the US version of the Huffington Post they already receive over 1.2 million visitors each month from the UK. They have launched with only 300 bloggers is their system and this is far short of the 10,000 writing on the USA version. However, Im sure this will quickly increase.
As well as the UK expansion the Huffington Post is planning on entering a lot of other European markets in their native languages, so expect to see the Huffington Post all over the place!
AOL have been having an identity crisis for quite some time, now it seems that Tim Armstrong (AOL CEO) is trying to amalgamate some of the small sites to create much larger branding within AOL. AOL has just finishing consolidating 53 different content brands into 20 “power brands.”
Within Huffington Post Celebrity you will now find: PopEater articles. AOL News is already consolidated into the Huffington Post and Politics Daily has been rolled into HuffPost Politics. Kitchen Daily will become HuffPost Kitchen, Parent Dish will become HuffPost Parents, AOL Black Voices will become HuffPost Black Voices, and so on. HuffPost Music, HuffPost Small Business, and HuffPost Kids will all be new.
Outside of the Huffington Post, the power brands that will remain are:
AOL.com
Autoblog
Engadget
Joystiq
Mapquest
MMA Fighting
Moviefone
Patch
Stylelist
TechCrunch
TUAW
AOL Autos
AOL Healthy Living
AOL Industry
AOL Money & Finance,
AOL Music
AOL Search
AOL Travel
AOL Video
It seems like Nintendo arent going to make a competitor to the PS3 blu-ray player on their new Nintendo Wii U.
Why did the company take away the convenience of being able to watch a movie on the same player used for playing games? Gaming site Kotaku quoted Nintendo president Satoru Iwata:
“The reason for that is we feel that enough people already have devices that are capable of playing DVDs and Blu-ray, such that it didn’t warrant the cost involved to build that functionality into the Wii U console because of the patents related to those technologies.”
It is now official, Tumblr has more blogs on their service than WordPress.com.
Tumblr has only been around for 4 years and considering that WordPress.com has been running for 8 years its a remarkable feet for the blogging platform.
Legislation has been introduced by U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo that would force 
