Startup Meme

In a bid to shun competition from Nvidia, AMD unveiled a series of new mobile graphics chips. The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 series will raise the bar for high-performance graphics in mobile computers. These chips are targeted at low-cost laptops and even high-end gaming notebooks – though these are low-powered versions of the previously launched ATI Radeon HD 4000 series.

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Apple has released the proxy statement for 2009 which contains the detail of financial compensation enjoyed by the company executives. Company CEO Steve Jobs retained his $1 salary for last year but had more than 5.5 million shares of Apple stock worth $500 million on paper. The largest investor of the company was Fidelity Investments with more than 46 million shares of stock. Following are five proposals of the shareholder for voting this time:

• Proposal 1 asks to re-elect the board of directors, consisting of Steve Jobs, William Campbell, Millard Drexler, Al Gore, Andrea Jung, Arthur Levinson, Eric Schmidt, and Jerry York.
• Proposal 2 asks for more transparency surrounding Apple’s political contributions.
• Proposal 3 asks the company to adopt a statement supporting universal health care for everyone, and not just employees.
• Proposal 4 asks the company to release a report on corporate strategies surrounding climate change and greenhouse gas emissions before July.
• Proposal 5 asks to adopt a policy that gives shareholders more input on executive compensation.

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Apparently a change of law this year shall force ISPs to withhold information about each and every e-mail sent or received in the UK. This shall be in force for an year. This not only seems like a waste of the tax-payers money but an attack on privacy and civil rights.

Where human rights group Liberty is voicing concerns, Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty states ISPs retain such info on a voluntary basis already. Let us know whether this move is right or not? Have your say.

Dr. Richard Clayton, a security researcher at the University of Cambridge’s computer lab says otherwise:

There are much better things to do to spend our billions on than snooping on everybody in the country just on the off-chance that they’re a criminal.

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NCsoft has finally released their massive multiplayer online game City of Heroes on Mac. TransGaming ported the game on OS X. As announced earlier this special edition of Mac release is digital. The release comes up with the expansion of City of Heroes and City of Villians both. The game time right now is of one month and after that you will have to pay a subscription fee to play it. Currently the game is available for $19.99 only.

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Time is nearing-up on a decision for Yahoo’s new CEO; it is expected that the company will decide by next week. Reports suggest that someone from outside the company will take up the post. WSJ source states that Carol Bartz, former CEO of Autodesk is a nominee, whereas Yahoo President Sue Decker, an insider, could also take up the post. To recall our readers, on November 17 Yahoo announced that (current) CEO Jerry Yang would step down, as and when a replacement is found. Yang is going to play his role as Chief Yahoo and on grab a place in the board of directors.

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Ask.com announced upgrading its search to cater with current needs and tech advancements. Ask.com is experimenting with DADS(SM) (Direct Answer from Database), DAFS(SM) (Direct Answer from Search) and AnswerFarm(SM) technologies which were disclosed late last year. The advancements will by far increase getting instant results on the first page, to consumers’ queries.

This is being experimented with NASCAR-related info as the sport is widely popular and most searched on Ask.com. This will specifically help with answering questions like: “who is the driver of car #60 in NASCAR?” EVP Tomasz Imielinski states:

We’re setting out to answer these types of queries regardless of how they’re phrased… something no search engine today can do.

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Amazon Web Services announced recently that the Web-based AWS Management Console is released providing easy-management of Amazon EC2 environment. Users can now use the environment via a point-and-click interface. It’s an easier way to gain access, where the console provides you entry through your Amazon user-ID/password.

You can forget about Firefox’s popular extension Elasticfox because the EC2 environment  is a far more quicker and accessible method. The console features carry:

• AMI Management: browse and search AMIs, launch instances from AMIs, deregister and register AMIs.
• Instance Management: launch, reboot, terminate, get console output, RDP/SSH help, etc.
• Security Group Management: create and delete security groups, add and remove permissions, configure firewall settings, open and close ports.
• Elastic IP Management: create and release IP Addresses, associate IPs to instances.
• Elastic Block Store: create, delete, attach and detach volumes. Take snapshots and manage snapshots.
• Key Pair management: create and delete public/private key pairs.

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At Macworld there’s more than one reason to roam around and look for new unreleased gadgets – talk of a four-core iPhone are going on. This one would go past the capabilities of matching up to Sony’s PSP; it’ll be leaps and bounds ahead. Also, firmware 3.0 would support this advancement. This should be a worry for console makers because if this is to happen, iPhone which is widely becoming a portable gaming platform, will increase its capabilities by far.

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I’m still clinging to my BlackBerry. They’re going to pry it out of my hands.

Ever thought how much this statement could earn The Most Powerful Man-To-Be on Earth? According to endorsement experts, about $50m. Wow, now that’s called an endorsement deal.

President-elect Barack Obama has repeatedly said how much his BlackBerry means to him and how he is dreading the prospect of being forced to give it up, because of legal and security concerns, once he takes office.

Here is a list of statements made by endorsement experts, nothing to explain, but a lot to awe about…

• This would be almost the biggest endorsement deal in the history of endorsements. He’s consistently seen using it and consistently in the news arguing — and arguing with issues of national security and global welfare — how he absolutely needs this to function on a daily basis, said Doug Shabelman, the president of Burns Entertainment, which arranges deals between celebrities and companies estimating the endorsement at at $50 million or more, because the endorsement is worldwide..
• You always want the celebrity to be a good fit with your brand, and is anybody considered a better communicator right now than Barack Obama, or a better networker? It couldn’t have a better spokesperson, said Fran Kelly, the chief executive of the advertising agency Arnold Worldwide, who estimated that an endorsement by Mr. Obama would be worth $25 million.
• The most powerful man in the country is saying, at this moment, basically, “I can’t live without mine.” It represents their now complete and final crossover to a device that people adore, said Lori Sale, the head of artist marketing at the agency Paradigm, mentioning that even the most A-list of A-list of A-list celebrities, would probably get 10 to 15 million dollars, President Elect could go double the figure.

To bad the biggest celebrity pitchman in the world is not earning a penny for his work and is soon to be snatched of his most priceless asset.

What do you think?

Leave us your comments…

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It was learnt that talks are underway between Circuit City and “two highly motivated and interested parties” in a bid to buy the company. Meanwhile Circuit City took approval, to sell off its business or total assets, from a bankruptcy court - the statement:

These interested parties are considering providing additional financing to allow the company to sustain operations and move forward with a subsequent restructuring through a stand-alone plan and/or purchasing the company or all or substantially all of the company’s assets. The parties have substantially completed due diligence and now are in negotiations with the company and the company’s major stakeholders in order to finalize such a transaction. While the company is optimistic that a transaction can be successfully finalized, no assurance can be given that this will occur.

Subsequently, it is also learnt that if Circuit City doesn’t go through with the sell, it could liquidate. On the other hand, Best Buy is stating that it continues to take market share. Narrowing its financial outlook the company stated that its holiday revenue was as per revised expectations. At CES 2009 Best Buy stated that revenue was up by 4 percent, coming up to expectations.

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3D is the hottest buzz in tech town at this time of the year. Wazabee just released a 3DeeShell for the iPhone. You may be wondering what in the world is this? Well this is a iPhone case that lets you view stuff in 3D, no glasses required. Yup I said, no Glasses required!!!

The case is made up of screen which actually enables you to see 3D content on your phone easily and intuitively as well. The company said that, it will start rolling out the cases in March this year to the consumer market fixed at a price of $50 each.

There are several applications as well to maximize your experience such as 3DeeCamera, 3Dee!oader and 3DeeVUsion allowing you to view and encode your images so that they are viewable in 3D. And to extend its base, Wazabee is offering developers its SDK, so that apps and other games can be built with support for 3D viewing.

The company is currently working on its offering for the MACBOOK.

Leave us your comments…

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AboutUs, a wiki operating company that displays information of various companies, businesses and organizations on the web has raised $2.5 million in its B round. The company is making profits with onsite ads and selling off wiki designs, etc to generate profits and boasts 7 million unique visitors. The wiki provider has also seen the inclusion of Voyager Capital’s MD Erik Benson joining its board.

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3D is the next big thing, and Sony today unveiled a “Could Be” version of its PS3 gaming console at the CES.

Don’t get caught up with specs, We’re not going to talk about specifications. This is just a look at what 3D could look like if Sony decided to move in this direction, a Sony CES representative said

Sony showed off Wipeout HD running in true 3D in their CES booth, and yet it has to be said, if Sony comes out with the first 3D based gaming console in the market, it could regain the lead from Wii and Xbox as it did couple of years ago.

Bear in mind that 3D is one area of solid investment that every digital company is looking forward to and personally speaking why not should I be able to play games in 3D? If the technology is good, why not shed some bucks for it?

Will you be ready to wear those kinky 3D glasses and shed some bucks for 3D games or not?

Leave us your comments…

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We all thought that the sub-$100 Coby netbooks would never become a reality right? But who was to tell that the possibility might be turning into actuality this CES.

Coby, the electronic manufacturer displayed a variety of base models on the CES floor tagged under $200. These were still under the label of “Research” but were told to be coming out soon.

If out, these netbooks, would definitely give ASUS some tough competition due to their institutive design and hardware reliability.

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“Release early, release often,” that’s apparently the creed the Google Chrome team lives by, as it describes today on its blog. Today the Google chrome team announced that they will be releasing Google Chrome into three different channels aimed at three different types of users.

The “Stable channel” will be for everyday users, a “Beta channel” for users who want to try out new but incomplete features and a “Developer preview channel” for those who want to try out really new ideas, some of which may not be fleshed out much at all. You can select your favorite channel here.

This kind of public releasing methodology  is not new as Apple does it fortnightly for its Safari Browser. But nonetheless, Microsoft has to look out and see that it will eventually be facing a tough competition with chrome, as  people would be giving their valuable feedback for the browser that is being regularly updated and released rather than the one (Yup I am talking about IE) which doesn’t get updated in years.

Leave us your comments…

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