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Under the Radar -- week ending August 2nd
02 Aug 2009 | 15.06 Europe/London
The www.samknows.com weekly round-up continues, this week looking at a blushing Ballmer, voiceless Google and William Shatner's answer phone messages...
Microsoft and Yahoo finally tied the knot this week - and blushing bride Steve Ballmer was upset that nobody could understand their love. "Nobody gets it. It's a little bit complicated," the MS CEO sniffed. And who can blame poor Steve when he tries so valiantly to describe the ins and outs? "On the Yahoo side - this is the one that stuns me that people haven't figured it out - Yahoo gets 88 percent of the search revenue they have today. They have zero percent COGS (cost of goods sold) and they have no R&D (research and development) expense and no ongoing capex (capital expenditure). It's sort of unbelievable." Sure is, Steve; sure is.
Also in the world of the "sort of unbelievable," it emerged eBay doesn't own a core component of its expensively-acquired Skype software. Despite having bought Skype for $2.6 billion, eBay has been licensing said component - and is now desperately trying to engineer a replacement following a dispute with the VOIP service's creators. It appears rumours of Skype's death, however, are greatly exaggerated.
And, while their withering rivals finally got it on, Apple managed to leave Google speechless. In other words, it blocked Google Voice on the iPhone. Or American mobile phone network AT&T had it blocked. Right now the details aren't clear - but we can leave it to the Feds to find them out.
Meanwhile British hacker Gary McKinnon will be extradited for trial in the US - and the British Home Secretary now says it would be against the law for him to intervene. But with even appeals from the 43-year-old boy's mother to President Barrack Obama having failed, MP Alan Johnson may not have stood a chance in any case. (An artist's impression of how a big screen adaptation of McKinnon's story would look is available here.)
Elsewhere, browser Firefox has passed the billion downloads mark, with reports suggesting it's currently used by around one in three web surfers worldwide.
The Government's guidelines on Twitter didn't manage to stop the man who could be next Prime Minister making a, um, twit of himself or a Premier League footballer telling his club to get Bent.
The Pirate Bay's been finding more enemies, including those who are demanding that it's somehow blocked from the Netherlands, who presumably don't believe it'll be sold on and legitimised by the end August.
And finally, William Shatner has been impersonating James T. Kirk of Star Trek fame. He's been leaving messages on the answer phones of the nice people at Hewlett-Packard, telling them they were all failures. Sweet of him, eh? At least he didn't swear at anyone this time.
Microsoft and Yahoo finally tied the knot this week - and blushing bride Steve Ballmer was upset that nobody could understand their love. "Nobody gets it. It's a little bit complicated," the MS CEO sniffed. And who can blame poor Steve when he tries so valiantly to describe the ins and outs? "On the Yahoo side - this is the one that stuns me that people haven't figured it out - Yahoo gets 88 percent of the search revenue they have today. They have zero percent COGS (cost of goods sold) and they have no R&D (research and development) expense and no ongoing capex (capital expenditure). It's sort of unbelievable." Sure is, Steve; sure is.
Also in the world of the "sort of unbelievable," it emerged eBay doesn't own a core component of its expensively-acquired Skype software. Despite having bought Skype for $2.6 billion, eBay has been licensing said component - and is now desperately trying to engineer a replacement following a dispute with the VOIP service's creators. It appears rumours of Skype's death, however, are greatly exaggerated.
And, while their withering rivals finally got it on, Apple managed to leave Google speechless. In other words, it blocked Google Voice on the iPhone. Or American mobile phone network AT&T had it blocked. Right now the details aren't clear - but we can leave it to the Feds to find them out.
Meanwhile British hacker Gary McKinnon will be extradited for trial in the US - and the British Home Secretary now says it would be against the law for him to intervene. But with even appeals from the 43-year-old boy's mother to President Barrack Obama having failed, MP Alan Johnson may not have stood a chance in any case. (An artist's impression of how a big screen adaptation of McKinnon's story would look is available here.)
Elsewhere, browser Firefox has passed the billion downloads mark, with reports suggesting it's currently used by around one in three web surfers worldwide.
The Government's guidelines on Twitter didn't manage to stop the man who could be next Prime Minister making a, um, twit of himself or a Premier League footballer telling his club to get Bent.
The Pirate Bay's been finding more enemies, including those who are demanding that it's somehow blocked from the Netherlands, who presumably don't believe it'll be sold on and legitimised by the end August.
And finally, William Shatner has been impersonating James T. Kirk of Star Trek fame. He's been leaving messages on the answer phones of the nice people at Hewlett-Packard, telling them they were all failures. Sweet of him, eh? At least he didn't swear at anyone this time.