BETTING ON SONY

Sony is gearing up its marketing department behind Blu-Ray DVDs, its next-generation disc for high definition movies. Toshiba and its partners are lined up behind HD DVD, a different, incompatible format. Sony hopes that you’ll buy its Blu-Ray players and movies...

REAL ESTATE FOR VOYEURS

Zillow.com launched its beta web site a few days ago, offering free access to real estate information that has been hard to come by until now. (It’s been added to the bruceb favorites page under Home-Family / Realty).Zillow displays estimates of the market value...

AOL & YAHOO ALLOW BIG SPENDERS TO AVOID SPAM FILTERS

AOL & Yahoo are going to allow spam to reach mailboxes if the senders pay a fee for each message. Here’s an article about the new system.It’s hard to predict the result, but my gut feeling is that it’s a disaster for consumers. AOL & Yahoo...

BLACKBERRY: DEATH BY PATENT

Here’s a fascinating article about the sequence of events leading up to Blackberry’s precarious position – the possibility that the entire Blackberry system will be shut down next month. It’s a “twisted tale of bold inventions, hubris,...

GOOGLE BUYS STAKE IN AOL, SELLS SOUL

Google’s agreement to purchase a five percent stake in AOL was widely reported, but I missed the important detail: as part of the deal, Google agreed to start putting AOL-sponsored search results on its main search results page. Here’s Paul...