Archive for September 5th, 2008
Microsoft 
‘s Seinfeld campaign launched Thursday night. The $300 million campaign starring the well-known comedian Jerry Seinfeld, however, didn’t say anything about Windows.The ad shows Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates picking out a new pair of shoes at a discount store. Seinfeld notices him and helps Gates test several pairs of shoes before finally selecting the perfect fit.
What does buying shoes have to do with Windows? Microsoft is calling it an effort to reconnect with consumers around the globe.
Future commercials will highlight how Windows has become part and parcel of the lives of consumers everywhere on PCs, online and through mobile devices. The first ads seek to start a conversation about the Windows brand using Seinfeld’s offbeat humor, Microsoft said.
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September 5th, 2008
Nearly 20 percent of American households are tuning into TV over the Internet. That’s twice the number from 2006, according to new research from The Conference Board Consumer Research Center and market-research firm TNS. The most popular destinations for online broadcasts? The official TV channel home page and YouTube.com.The growing movement toward watching TV online is attributable, in part, to schedule-bucking viewers who want to watch the shows they want to watch when they want to watch them. Other reasons for the rise in online TV viewing include portability and the ability to skip commercials.
“Most consumers are pressed for time and require flexibility in their daily schedules and TV viewing habits,” said Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center. “Being able to watch broadcasts on their own time and at their convenience are clearly reasons why we are seeing a greater number turning to the Internet. And, it is the reason why we would expect to see this trend continue.”
Click here to read the rest of this story on NewsFactor.
September 5th, 2008
Red Hat on Thursday announced the acquisition of Qumranet, paying about $107 million in cash for the privately held company.Qumranet is a virtualization company that is best known for its KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) platform and SolidICE offering, a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). In combination, these two Qumranet products offer a virtualization platform for enterprise customers.
Red Hat will also pick up Qumranet’s talent. The company’s team of professionals that develop, test and support Qumranet solutions, as well as leaders of the open-source community KVM project, will join Red Hat.
“Red Hat customers enjoy highly responsive, flexible and cost-effective IT infrastructures,” said Jim Whitehurst, president and CEO of Red Hat. “This acquisition furthers our capability to widen the gap between open source and proprietary infrastructure software.”
Click here to read the rest of this story on NewsFactor.
September 5th, 2008
Google Chrome. It’s a browser that was admittedly still in the development oven when Google released it, so are Internet Explorer 8-killer comments premature? Some analysts think so.On Tuesday, Google launched its latest innovation: a new open-source browser intended to create a better Web experience. Chrome is now available in more than 40 languages for the Windows operating system.
Flanked by promises on one side and hype on the other, Chrome took one percent of the global browser market within a day of launch, according to Web traffic-analysis company StatCounter.
“This is a phenomenal performance,” said Aodhan Cullen of StatCounter. “This is war on Microsoft , but the big loser could be Firefox.” StatCounter’s analysis also revealed that Internet Explorer holds 70 percent of the global browser market, followed by Firefox with 22 percent.
Click here to read the rest of this story on NewsFactor.
September 5th, 2008
