Alex Wilhelm
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Latest from Alex Wilhelm
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Yahoo’s Weak Quarter May Show Cracks In Mobile Strategy
Yahoo managed to beat low investor expectations by a slim margin yesterday and was rewarded with a short bump this morning that has already burned off. Yahoo's non-GAAP earnings per share totaled $0.38 during the quarter on revenue of $1.08 billion. For all the media scrutiny that Yahoo receives, its financial performance feels almost uninvestigated. Read More
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Twitter Doubles Its Q3 Revenue, But Its Aggregate 2013 Loss Has Widened To $133.8M
According to its newly refiled S-1 document, Twitter has lost $133.8 million to date in 2013. That compares negatively with its equivalent loss of $70.7 million in 2012. Both loss figures include the results of the first 9 months of the calendar year. Read More
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Yahoo Spent $163 Million In Cash On Acquisitions In Q3, Down 84% From Its Tumblr’d Q2
In the third quarter, Yahoo purchased eight companies, including Lexity, Rockmelt, and Xobni. According to its earnings release, the net cash impact on those purchases totalled $163 million. Does that mean that the total value of the eight purchases came to $163 million? Not at all. That figure is merely the net cash outflow for Yahoo, or, the total cash that it paid to the companies’… Read More
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Yahoo Reduces Planned Sale Of Alibaba Shares By 20%, Will Keep More Skin In The Game When It IPOs
Today in conjunction with its third quarter earnings release, Yahoo announced that it has come to a new agreement with Alibaba that will force the company to sell less of its shares in the Chinese ecommerce firm when it goes public. The number of shares that Yahoo will be required to sell now totals 208 million. That figure represents a 20.4 percent decrease on the former 261.5 million share… Read More
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After Google, MPAA Spat, PiracyData Reports Most-Pirated Films Are Unavailable
PiracyData.org, a new website built by folks from the Mercatus Center at George Washington University, highlights a fact that has been too little known for some time: The most popular pirated content is often unavailable for streaming, rental, or digital purchase and is, therefore, virtually impossible to view legally. Read More
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To Get Around US Law, The NSA Collects Email Address Books And Chat Buddy Lists From Foreign Locations
The Washington Post broke news this afternoon that the National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting huge numbers of email address books and chat buddy lists for both foreign individuals and United States citizens. It appears that the NSA lacks Congressional authority to collect buddy lists and address book information in the way that it currently does. As the Post rightly points out, address… Read More
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Can Yahoo’s Growing Mobile Usage Drag It From The Revenue Doldrums In Q3?
Yahoo will report its third-quarter earnings tomorrow. Analysts expect per-share profit of $0.33 on revenue of $1.1 billion. That compares unfavorably to Yahoo's year-ago third quarter, in which it reported $1.1 billion in revenue, and a slightly higher $0.35 per share income. Read More
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Microsoft Announces Update 3 For Windows Phone 8 Coming This Year With Larger Screens, More Live Tiles
Today Microsoft announced its third update to Windows Phone 8. This is the set of new features and upgrades that will carry the smartphone platform through the holiday sales cycle. Included among the new set of code is support for faster processors, larger screens, higher resolution displays, better Internet sharing, and a set of quality of life changes that will be welcome to current handsets… Read More
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Microsoft: Yeah, The Surface RT’s Name Confused Consumers
In its new generation of tablet hybrid hardware, Microsoft renamed its lower-end, ARM-based Surface device, calling it the Surface 2. It kept its prior Surface Pro branding in place. Why ditch the original Surface RT name? As you expected, consumers didn’t get what it meant. Speaking recently with ARN, an Australian publication, Jack Cowett – a Microsoft employee who works on Surface… Read More
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Rappers Are Rapping About Being Verified (Or Not) On Twitter
Here's a question: Are rappers rapping about being verified on Twitter? As it turns out, a number have, both in the positive (verified) and the negative (not verified). And, it also turns out, I am way, way behind. Read More
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Here Is Apple’s Mailer Asking Cupertino Residents To Support Its New Campus Ahead Of City Council Vote
If you live in Cupertino, you might have received a little gift from Apple in the mail: a brochure asking for support for its new headquarters, which the company calls "Apple Campus 2." The circular building has become famous even before becoming real, due mostly to its striking design and massive size. The complex, when complete, will house around 13,000 of Apple's employees. Read More
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The Comical Irony That iOS 7 Users Are Suffering From Blue Screens Of Death
So, Windows sometimes does this thing when your computer freaks the heck out, displays a blue screen, and then reboots or fails in some other way. Called the Blue Screen of Death, it's long been a cultural meme among nerds about the shortcomings of Windows. Blue Screens are more past than present, as they are, at least in my experience, more the provenance of Windows XP than Windows 7 or 8. Read More
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ICANN, W3C Call For End Of US Internet Ascendancy Following NSA Revelations
Key Internet stakeholders, including the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) have released a statement condemning pervasive government surveillance and calling for an internationalization of the Internet's underlying framework. Read More
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Rep. Amash Slams Congressional Intelligence Committees As The “Opponents Of Congress”
Members of Congress are not very content with the flow of information that reaches their ears concerning the pervasive surveillance activities of the United States intelligence apparatus. Following remarks from Senator Bob Corker that Congress often learns more from newspapers than their briefings on the National Security Agency and its cohorts, Rep. Amash blasted Congressional intelligence… Read More
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Is HP Investing Properly For A Post-PC And Post-Printer Future?
Yesterday HP enjoyed a sharp rally following encouraging words from its CEO, the release of its fiscal 2014 guidelines, and promise that more cash would be returned to investors. The company, its CEO Meg Whitman said, is in the midst of real turnaround. Yes, revenue will decline in fiscal 2014 from fiscal 2013 levels, margins remain an issue, and HP will generate non-GAAP EPS only in the range… Read More
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Microsoft Updates Its Outlook.com Android App With Better Syncing, Storage, Colors And More
Today Microsoft announced an update to its Android Outlook.com application, including server-side search, improved offline mail storage, colors, vacation replies, and aliases. Outlook.com, a key project for Microsoft, has over 400 million users. The successor to Hotmail, Outlook.com is Microsoft’s mail vision for all mobile platforms. According to Microsoft, 68% of Outlook.com users hit up… Read More
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Microsoft Rereleases Its YouTube App For Windows Phone
Microsoft today re-released its old YouTube app for Windows Phone, two months after Google axed the prior version over a terms spat. In May, Google and Microsoft decided to work together to get a strong YouTube app into the Windows Phone marketplace. Microsoft had built something that broke Google's terms of service (the app was pretty rocking, though), and so the firms decided to work… Read More
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PC Market Beats Expectations, Slips 7.6% In Q3
According to IDC, the PC market contracted 7.6 percent in the third quarter. The group had expected a 9.5 percent decline, so the quarter outperformed expectations. In the United States, the PC market was essentially flat during the quarter, with unit volume falling a mere 0.2 percent compared to the year prior. That fact, coupled with rising device volume for the three largest OEMs, provides a… Read More
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HP Admits What We Already Knew: Microsoft Is At War With Its OEM Partners
HP stated the obvious today, clearing the air a bit in the world of personal computing, not to mention other areas of the technology industry. Microsoft, it said, is now a competitor to its business. Of course, we knew this. HP sells software, services, and devices. So does Microsoft. Here's the key quote: "Current [HP] partners like Intel and Microsoft are turning from partners to outright… Read More
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Microsoft Promises Quick App Approvals Following Windows 8.1 Release
After a public face plant regarding the release of its operating system update to developers, Microsoft today announced that applications built for Windows 8.1 will be approved no more than five days following their submission, once the new build of Windows becomes generally available. That means that come October 18, when Windows 8.1 becomes downloadable by all, apps submitted to take… Read More
