[economy] Forum Topics

As goes Google, so goes the rest of the universe -- or at least that's the fear this week after the start up-turned-giant-turned-common verb reported disappointing earnings that sent the Silicon Valley stock over a digital cliff after-hours Thursday. [ATTACH=right]15859[/ATTACH]The company pulled in 1.84 billion dollars for the quarter or …

I know that Apple has been expending a lot of hot air telling anyone who will listen that the new iTunes pricing regime is a good thing for consumers. I know that it reckons that for every song which is ramped up to the new 99p (here in the UK) …

[ATTACH=RIGHT]16322[/ATTACH]This week players of Facebook games found themselves unexpectedly rewarded for their playtime. The frequent messages that Facebook has awarded the gamer with credits signals Facebook's push to implement [URL="http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=837"]Facebook Credits[/URL], a virtual currency intended to standardize payments across the multitude of Facebook applications. The push of the credits program …

[ATTACH=RIGHT]16601[/ATTACH]According to a report released by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) yesterday (August 10), the video game industry put $4.9 billion dollars in the U.S. economy’s back pocket in 2009, laughing in the face of its financial ruin. The statistics, featured in [I]Video Games in the 21st Century: The 2010 …

The economic news has been so bad of late, it's actually difficult to imagine that some businesses are profitable. It's easy to get sucked into the abyss of huge layoffs, high unemployment figures and generally negative fall-out from the economic meltdown, but in spite of all this, there are technology …

Thanks to the US dollar getting stronger against the Euro as the European debt crisis takes hold, and shows no signs of weakening for the remainder of the year, so the outlook for IT spending growth looks dim. So dim, in fact, that Gartner analysts have cut back the worldwide …

[ATTACH=right]14831[/ATTACH]Two days ago, the Dow Jones Industrialized Average [URL="http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/probing+point+dive/3001581/story.html"]plunged almost 1000 points in a half hour[/URL]. That's almost 10 percent of the entire value of the market in 30 minutes. That's insane! What happened? Well, it turns out, it was a fairly simple technological trigger that caused the problem. Seems …

According to Gartner you, as in everyone, will start spending more on IT this year. Richard Gordon, a research vice president with the information technology analyst outfit, says that strong fourth quarter sales along with "an unseasonably robust hardware supply chain in the first quarter of 2010" plus a little …

There has been [URL="http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/daveyw/2009/01/13/no-crisis-in-it-security-budgets/"]much speculation[/URL] regarding job losses at Microsoft of late, and now the truth is out. Thankfully the scale of the damage is not as great as at first feared, and nowhere near the [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3757.html"]15,000 job losses[/URL] talked about recently. It would seem that 1400 jobs are to …

A new normal? That’s what one financial services guru says America consumers can expect now that the housing market has collapsed and people are losing their jobs in droves. “The worst is yet to come," adds Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates. He thinks that the once lofty American's …

While companies worldwide look for ways to reduce costs, shed dead weight from their labor resources and streamline their businesses, it makes me wonder if Linux will survive the global economic meltdown. Oh, I know it will survive in terms of us geeks who use it and tout its goodness. …

Windows 7 is coming next month. That's hardly news to any of you, I'm sure, but have you considered that this major OS release could be the catalyst to end the recession? I'm guessing not many of you have come to that conclusion, but consider this: Many, many companies steered …

Apple released its [URL="http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/07/21results.html"]third quarter numbers[/URL] yesterday and by any benchmark they were impressive. Consider these numbers as [URL="http://www.macworld.com/article/141829/2009/07/appleq309.html?lsrc=top_1"]reported by Macworld[/URL]: * $8.34 billion in sales and a net profit of $1.23 billion * 5.2 million iPhones * 10. 2 million iPods * 2.6 million Macs (of which1.75 million were …

I received a newsletter from [URL="http://www.rpath.com"]rPath[/URL] concerning Lean IT and it occurred to me that Linux is the keystone in each one of the elements listed in it: Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Cost reduction mandates. As more businesses work toward saving money, they'll look for ways to save on IT …

Apple came out with its earnings report yesterday, and while all wasn't rosy for the Cupertino technology company, bottom line is they made money as earnings increased an impressive an impressive 8.7 percent in year over year earnings with net profits up 15 percent (as reported in [URL="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/apr/22/apple-quarter-results"]the Guardian[/URL]). All …

President Obama – who only weeks ago warned of the greatest financial meltdown since the Great Depression if his $1.1 trillion stimulus package wasn’t passed by Congress - now says that he sees a “glimmer of hope” that the financial trauma is ending and that things could be stabilizing. Call …

I read a [URL="http://tech.yahoo.com/news/infoworld/20090403/tc_infoworld/131038"]news story[/URL] by Paul Krill about how Linux OS Server shipments have and will continue to slip by double-digit margins in 2009. Windows Server shipments are hit hard as well but almost 5% less so than those of Linux. The original report came from IDC. The IDC …

Microsoft has been active lately, showing some signs of spunk. I reported last week that Steve Ballmer was going straight after Apple at the McGraw Hill Summit (as I wrote in [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4155.html"]Ballmer Wastes No Words Going After Apple[/URL]). This week we see the release of an [URL="http://byronmiller.typepad.com/byronmiller/2009/03/new-microsoft-ad-goes-after-high-price-of-apple.html"]ad campaign comparing Apple …

Is there a stimulus package on the way for those who use Linux and Open Source Software? You bet there is but it might not come from where you'd expect. Too many wasted stimulus dollars have already rained down upon those who wasted their own money but this time it'll …

Crikey! And there I was thinking we were slap bang in the middle of a global recession. Things can't be that bad, I guess, if a retailer can find $5.1 million to pay for a new domain name. Yet that is exactly what Toys R Us has paid out in …

You have to give Microsoft credit. They keep trying, even if what they are trying is copying Apple. This time they have announced they are going to open retail stores. Sound familiar? It should because it's what Apple has done so successfully with its Apple Store strategy. The problem Microsoft …

Remember last month when DaniWeb [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3847.html"]reported[/URL] how some 1400 jobs were to be lost at Microsoft? These losses forming the first part of a plan to trim costs which would see a total of 5000 Microsofties facing the axe. Well now, in the most bizarre of twists, it seems that …

Last week Apple and Microsoft released their fourth quarter MP3 player sales figures, which Apple chooses to call its first quarter for some odd reason, and the numbers were a startling contrast. On one hand you had Microsoft with a 54 percent drop off in sales from the fourth quarter …

For the last 10 years Google has been on an upward trajectory making gobs of money and astounding us all with there seemingly endless fount of innovation. For a time, there seemed to be a new product announcement every week. Google has always been very savvy about exploiting the news …

Security experts [URL="http://www.mcafee.com"]McAfee[/URL] confirm what we already know: when the [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3023.html"]economy starts to hurt[/URL], the purveyors of malware jump in to increase the pain. With the revelation of it's 2009 threat predictions, McAfee looks ahead to a dismal year of continuing cyberthreats. Like I say, with no hint of surprise …

Slow day in the markets on Monday, but we’re going to see a lot of 4th quarter financials come out of tech stocks this week, and the viewing, I suspect, won’t be pretty. One piece of news that has come out today is Intel cutting some of its chip prices …

I write a great deal about Google mostly because it is always trying new things and putting them out there for free for the world to try. The tools are easy to access and use from wherever you are--any device with a browser and an internet connection--and you can't beat …

[I]Instant karma's gonna get you Gonna knock you right on the head ~John Lennon. [/I] It's 2009 and I'm sure the powers that be at Microsoft are hoping it's going to be a good one without any tears, but even as the old year closed, the news kept getting worse …

This is the time of year for wish lists, so why not make a list of products I would like to see Apple make in 2009. I'm not under any illusions that Apple will actually listen to me, but this is a fun exercise and some of these would be …

There’s a light trading load on Wall Street this week, with trader’s thoughts turning to visions of sugarplum martinis dancing in their heads. Anything to help forget 2008, right? Although 2009 looks like it won’t be any better. This, from Subir Gokarn, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s, Asia Pacific. …