ESPN and Twitter Inc. are announcing a major expansion of their collaboration to post sports-related videos on the short-messaging service—part of a growing wave of tie-ups as TV networks and Twitter hunt for new advertising revenue. ESPN, which is majority-owned by Walt Disney Co., plans to show video-highlight clips on Twitter of major sports events in the coming year, including from soccer matches leading up to the World Cup, college football and the X Games extreme-sports tournaments. People can watch the video clips on Twitter’s website and mobile apps shortly after the action happens on TV. The sports network plans to sell ads that will run inside the video clips, and marketing sponsors will commit to buying from Twitter a minimum value of “promoted”—or paid—Twitter posts to circulate their marketing pitches. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
Read MoreLess than one year after General Motors Corp. CIO Randy Mott announced that the automaker would stop outsourcing its IT work to other companies, GM today launched a new $130 million data center of its own. The company is betting that a thoroughly modernized approach to IT — consciously modeled in many ways on advances made by Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. — will help accelerate the turnaround led by chief executive Dan Akerson. The company’s new data center has been designed to be easier to maintain and expand, and less expensive to cool than older, conventional data centers. It also supports a mixture of conventional and experimental technologies that the company hopes will measurably improve its capacity to innovate by doubling the number of IT projects it is able to undertake. But those capabilities will not transform the company unless the rest of the company undergoes an accompanying cultural shift, one that Mr. Mott says has “just begun.” Read the rest of this post on the original site »
Read More“Reject the cynics that say technology is flattening your experience of the world. The people who say that technology has disconnected you are wrong, but so are the people who say technology has automatically connected you.” – Melinda Gates , delivering the commencement speech at Duke University
Read MoreFederal prosecutors filed charges this week against eight people, accusing them of taking part in a high-tech scheme to steal money from multiple ATMs simultaneously, using stolen prepaid debit-card numbers. The eight were part of a wider plot to steal tens of millions of dollars from locations across the globe, prosecutors allege. Read the rest of this post on the original site
Read MoreA federal appeals court on Friday offered its long-awaited view on when a piece of software can be patented. The upshot: seven opinions, totaling more than 120 pages, and no clear answer. While a majority of the 10-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed that some of the patent claims in question were invalid, no more than five judges agreed on the legal rationale leading to that conclusion. The judges divided 5-5 on other claims. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
Read MoreSony Corp. said Thursday it swung back to a profit in its fiscal fourth quarter, lifted by one-time gains from the sale of office buildings and shareholdings. The quarterly profit, reversing a massive loss from a year earlier, propelled the slumping Japanese electronics maker to its first annual profit in five years. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
Read MoreHaving grabbed a big chunk of the profitable smartphone business from Apple Inc. and others, Samsung Electronics Co. now faces a new, enviable Apple-like challenge: a mammoth pile of unspent, accumulated cash. After a first quarter marked by a 42 percent rise in net profit, Samsung said its cash and cash equivalents grew to nearly $40 billion at the end of March. After stripping out debt, Samsung’s net cash position is 31.2 trillion won, or $28.5 billion. Already one of the biggest in Asia, Samsung’s cash pile is building at an eye-popping rate. Its net cash has nearly tripled over the past year alone. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
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