One of the big stories this week is a 10 year deal between Yahoo and Microsoft, to have their new search engine Bing power the search on Yahoo’s entire network.  This means that Yahoo is going to abandon their own search technology, replacing it with the fairly new Bing.  The goal of any company in the search engine business can be summarized down to two words: Beat Google. Google has only [...]

Big breaking news this morning is that Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios is leaving the company to start a new multimedia production company at IAC. Who is Ben Silverman?  He is a successful agent turned producer turned network head.  His specialty has been adapting international TV formats in the US.  This is not necessarily the easiest thing.  Remember [...]

1. Online shoe retailer Zappos.com is sold to Amazon for $807 Million. Zappos has built its business through exceptionally strong customer service, including, but not limited to their Twitter account.  The company’s name also plays off of the spanish word for shoes, zapatos, but in a way where it is also appealing to English speakers, since the word “zap” is kinda cool. 2. ESPN exercises [...]

I am one of the few lucky ones, I guess.  In 2007, I signed up for a beta for a free phone service called GrandCentral, not to be confused with the beautiful Metro-North terminal.  It is a free phone service that allowed users to redirect a number they gave you to any phone that you chose.  It was revolutionary. Then Google bought it, froze the ability for its users to invite others.  Anyone interested, [...]

Phish is using a fun flash video to keep fans engaged during their monthlong tour break. Friday, June 26, 2009 was a day many of us won’t forget.  The top story throughout the news media was the death of some super famous celebrity, but it wasn’t the only thing that was on the mind of music fans. One of my favorite bands, Phish, unveiled a flash movie on its homepage, to “Save The [...]

1. Important documents about Twitter’s business strategy (or lack of it) were leaked for the world to see.  Somebody hacked into the Google docs account of one of Twitter’s employees.  They are afraid of Facebook and do NOT want to be associated with Microsoft. 2. Apple released a pair of software updates, pissing off people.  Now, you can’t tether your non-jailbroken iphone or [...]

This past Monday, Tim Horton’s, the Canadian coffee and donut chain opened its first few stores in the New York City area. Welcome to NY, Tim! All of them are in former Dunkin Donuts locations in the vicinity of Penn Stations owned by Riese Restaurants. How did I find out about this?  Twitter, of course!  One of the tweeters who I regularly follow mentioned about this, and linked to a coupon [...]

In the past 24 hours, I have been running a reboot of my Twitter account.  I had about 1800 followers, and was following 1600 accounts myself.  However, I’ve been finding my Twitter feed to be less and less valuable than it previously was. I joined Twitter in the summer of 2007, after hearing so many good things about it from social media icon Chris Brogan.  I started following him, along [...]

1. Wednesday was 07/08/09, at least according to the US calendar.  There was 12:34:56 on 07/08/09 as well as 4:56 on 07/08/09, amongst the many other number combinations available.  What was your favorite? 2. Google announced its own operating system, called Chrome.  Sound familiar?  It is also the name of their web browser, which currently isn’t ready for prime time on my OS of choice, Mac. 3. [...]

Ad for the newly rebranded Syfy at 30 Rock A few months ago, NBC Universal announced that the Science Fiction Channel, better know in recent years as just SciFi, announced they would change their name.  What would this name be?  Syfy.  It has the same pronounciation as its predecessor, but spelled differently. There are people who don’t like it.  What is a Syfy?  But I do.  Why?  SciFi [...]