David Needle

SAN FRANCISCO — “Discount Prices!” “Limited Time Offer!” “Buy Now and Save $!” These and countless other marketing slogans regularly bombard consumers via traditional and Internet media. They are also Exhibit A, B and C on how not to leverage social media, said speakers at the Social Media Strategies Conference here Wednesday. Take 1-800-DENTIST. The […]

Google’s quest to make millions of books searchable online will go forward now that that it’s worked out a settlement with the Author’s Guild for $125 million. The deal ends copyright infringement lawsuits that publishers and authors unleashed against the Google Library Project when it was announced three years ago. Under the agreement, Google (NASDAQ: […]

While Apple and Google grab most of the smartphone headlines for the iPhone and G1, respectively, Microsoft has quietly gone about the business of expanding the already sprawling ecosystem around its own Windows Mobile software. “One thing we get asked a lot by media and analysts is ‘What’s going on with Windows Mobile?’” said Scott […]

Is the PC industry finally ready to tackle the growing PBA outbreak? PBA, (for Pre Boot Anxiety) is the clever name [New York Times writer Matt Richtel gave ](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/technology/26boot.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1225065707-KZKxbX2wcwUXWzT8ixHLbg)to that all-too-familiar, twiddling-my-thumbs, C’mon, **C’MON!** state of unease PC users experience every day waiting for their system to boot and Windows to finish loading. While not […]

This week, Apple announced its iPhone App store has had more than a whopping 200 million downloads in less than four months of operation. That’s a staggering number even if the majority of those are for free-to-almost free (99 cents) programs. A big driver is clearly the fun factor and a startup called Smule is […]

Users of Google’s popular Gmail e-mail service now have access to an improved version of the service on mobile devices. The search giant on Thursday announced a “Mobile 2.0” version of Gmail designed for BlackBerry and other J2ME-supported smartphones. Devices that use J2ME (Sun’s Java 2 Platform Micro Edition designed for mobile) includes the Nokia […]

Silicon Valley is still reverberating from the [doom and gloom slide show](http://donaldryan.net/2008/10/10/sequoia-slide-show/) making the rounds leaked from a company presentation by uber tech investment firm [Sequoia Capital](http://www.sequoiacap.com/). Sequoia has helped fund such hits as Google, Oracle and Apple, Among the highlights — or low lights depending on your perspective — of Sequoia’s message was speculation […]

There are plenty of places online to dig up the latest on your interests — by connecting with like-minded people through social networks like Facebook and MySpace, or by scouring social bookmarking sites like Delicious. But is there a need for more direct access to specific interests — having the Web serve you content like […]

Mobile developers have a new playground to play in. Today, the Google-led Open Handset Alliance followed through on its promise to make its source code available for free as part of its Android Open Source Project. The first Android-based phone, the G1, was released earlier this month by T-Mobile and the Android software has been […]

Less is more is part of the message behind improvements announced today for Scour.com’s search engine. Launched in July, the company said the new version reduces the number of sponsored (i.e. paid) results highlighted at the top of the page and increased the number of listings overall. Speed has been improved by 80 percent, to […]

Google’s Udi ManberSource: Lisa Arthur MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Think Google knows all there is to know about search? Not quite. In fact, it sees plenty of thorny issues and challenges ahead, particularly in its efforts to sift through its own internal data. Speaking here during an event hosted by Carnegie Mellon at its Silicon Valley campus, […]

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The industry may be coming to grips with the idea of Web 2.0, but some insiders are already looking ahead to the new technologies and new monetization strategies that they see as part of Web 3.0. While Web 2.0 delivered innovations in areas like social networking and user-generated content, its next […]