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‘news’ Stories

Acer slashes bonuses, salaries & staff over $150m inventory “abnormalities”

Chris Davies, Jun 2nd 2011 Discuss [0]

Bad news if you were hoping for a nice Christmas present from Acer chairman and CEO J.T. Wang. The exec is forgoing a salary for his role as director and, indeed, waiving his 2010 bonus, as part of an attempt to make up for a $150m write-off over "high channel inventory and disputed accounts receivable in EMEA." The company hasn't detailed exactly what issues have been uncovered, simply describing it as "abnormalities in terms of channel inventory stored in freight forwarders’ warehouses." Read The Full Story

YouTube turns six: 3 billion views per day

Chris Davies, May 25th 2011 Discuss [1]

It's YouTube's sixth birthday, and if you thought online video wouldn't take off - what, really? - then prepare for the avalanche of stats. The site now sees more than 3bn views per day, with a fresh 48hrs worth of footage added every minute. Read The Full Story

Symbian-based SYMBEOSE axed before EU splashes its €22m

Chris Davies, May 24th 2011 Discuss [0]

Remember SYMBEOSE? The open-source project prompted no shortage of scratched heads late last year, when the European Commission revealed it planned to inject €22m ($31m) into turning Symbian into the "Embedded Operating System for Europe." Now, with Symbian's future well off Nokia's long term to-do list, it's been confirmed that the SYMBEOSE plans have been scrapped, and thankfully before a Euro has been spent. Read The Full Story

Twitter snaps up TweetDeck in $40m desperation deal

Chris Davies, May 24th 2011 Discuss [0]

Twitter has reportedly finally got around to snapping up TweetDeck, in a deal worth over $40m according to CNN. Although neither company has officially confirmed the acquisition - which will paid for with a mixture of cash and stock - the paperwork was apparently signed on Monday. Read The Full Story

Foxconn iPad 2 plant explosion [Video] [Updated]

Chris Davies, May 20th 2011 Discuss [29]

An explosion at the Foxconn Chengdu production facility in China has been reported, the facility where Apple produces much of its iPad 2 supply. According to MIC Gadget, the explosion happened at 19:10 local time; numbers of injured are unknown, though one report suggests that 6-7 people have already been seen by doctors at the scene, and more are expected imminently.

Read The Full Story

Microsoft axes Courier-creating Pioneer Studios

Chris Davies, May 20th 2011 Discuss [0]

Microsoft has shuttered its Pioneer Studios consumer electronics operation, a skunkworks project the company had hoped would enable it to develop innovative technologies and products. Responsible for the Microsoft Courier concept, the KIN phones and various chunks of Windows Phone 7, Xbox and Zune, CNET reports, Pioneer Studios had been led my ex-Entertainment and Device CTO J Allard, who left the company last year. Read The Full Story

Apple Store down: What’s incoming? [Update: Back!]

Chris Davies, May 18th 2011 Discuss [3]

Fancy a quick mid-week Apple Store refresh? Apple obviously does, with its online retail arm down for updates at the moment. It's not just the US branch, either; European and Asian stores have been taken offline too. Read The Full Story

Winklevii Have 0.00% Chance of Taking Facebook Case to Supreme Court

Samia Perkins, May 17th 2011 Discuss [3]

Oh dear. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss just can't catch a break. First their $65 million Facebook settlement turns into $100 million, and now the courts have turned them out on the street. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals want nothing to do with them. In fact, they said this: “The petition for rehearing en banc is denied. See Fed. R. App. P. 35, 40. No further petitions for rehearing or rehearing en banc may be filed.” Harsh, eh? What that means is, "go away and stop bothering us, YOU DON'T HAVE A CASE!" Now the poor twins have nowhere to go, except the Supreme Court. Read The Full Story

T-Mobile USA Q1 2011: Income dives as nearly 1m subscribers jump ship

Chris Davies, May 6th 2011 Discuss [17]

T-Mobile USA has announced its Q1 2011 results, and the numbers don't look great. Net customer losses hit 99,000 while revenue flatlined from Q1 2010 at $4.63bn; however, despite ARPU (average revenue per user) remaining steady at $46, overall income dived from $362m in Q1 2010 to $135m in Q1 2011. Read The Full Story

NASA scrubs Endeavour launch over power unit problems

Chris Davies, Apr 29th 2011 Discuss [6]

Looks like all that LEGO isn't going into space after all, at least not today. NASA has announced that it has scrubbed today's Space Shuttle Endeavour launch"because of an issue associated with Auxiliary Power Unit 1 heaters." Engineers will assess the issue, but NASA warns that the process will take at least 48-hours and likely more. Read The Full Story

Amazon details AWS failure: 0.07% of volumes in downed zone lost

Chris Davies, Apr 29th 2011 Discuss [0]

Amazon has released a lengthy explanation of its recent Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) and Relational Database Service (RDS) downtime, blaming "stuck" data volumes and the system's inability to work around them for the failure of Amazon Web Services. According to the AWS team, a network change in an "Availability Zone" in the US East region caused the nodes in that zone to get "stuck", refusing to read or write data. Other nodes then became stuck themselves, when trying to access those initial stuck nodes. Read The Full Story