inspiretech Blog

Over the years, there has been much debate over whether or not to rebuild this wonder of the ancient world. At over 30 meters tall, it was one of the tallest statues of classical antiquity. An East German artist has revealed plans (much to the delight of the people of this Agean island) to rebuild the Colossus of Rhodes. The Colossus of Rhodes was built in tribute to the Greek sun god Helios over two millennia ago. It stood for a mere 60 years before an earthquake brought the Colossus of Rhodes down. The remains then sat on the ground for hundreds of years before being sold to a merchant who smelt it down for weapons (or so the legend was told). Gert Hof plans to rebuild the Colossus of Rhodes bigger than it was before and it will feature light shows that tell stories at night.

-Derek

On Tuesday November 18th, shares of Yahoo Inc increased in value by over 11 percent as news of CEO Jerry Yang’s retirement. The struggling company refused a buyout of over 4.6 billion from Microsoft earlier this year in May (a move made by Jerry Yang which irked many a shareholder). As Yahoo braces itself for an economic downturn worse than the dot-com bust of 2008. Board members have been calling for Yang’s resignation since July while the CEO struggled to find a solution to the company’s impending problems. A potential marketing deal with Google was turned down by the Justice department as it would be too close to a monopoly. A desperate look into acquiring AOL was also shot down. Now with CEO Jerry Yang relinquishing the throne, there is a renewed hope in the investor community that Microsoft would once again pitch an offer to the dying giant.
-Derek
[Source:yahoo]

When Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion two years ago, they hoped that the site would be able to generate all that money and then some. And at the time, it seemed like it would. YouTube was so attractive to internet users that they generated millions and millions of unique hits since its inception. But there is a problem with YouTube. The problem is that advertisers would not want to advertise on a Chocolate Rain video or some video blog of some guy ranting about Miley Cyrus. Hulu, on the other hand, is a site that offers free streaming TV and movie clips that are supported by advertisements. Advertisers love Hulu because of its legality and their content isn’t user-made. In the month of September, YouTube generated over 83 million unique hits and only got $6 million in revenue. In the same month for Hulu, they got only 6 million unique hits, but they were about to generate $70 million in revenue. So Google must be kicking themselves in the butt for not investing in Hulu instead.

- Geoff

[Source: CrunchGear]

Classmates.com has been sued by a user for deceptive marketing techniques. We’ve all seen classmates.com’s ads on various sites promising reunions and the possibility of undoing some wrongs from childhood. This marketing ploy has been used by Classmates.com since they opened back in 1995 but the e-mails that we often get from them are far from the truth. The plaintiff, a man from San Diego, charged that he received an Email from Classmates.com notifying him that people were trying to contact him. After registering and paying to use the premium service, he found that not only was nobody was trying to contact him, nobody had even searched his name. The man is now suing Classmates.com for a refund and demanding that the site pay a fine for the deception.

-Derek

RIM has seen a lot of their business from the younger crowd move over to the hip new iPhone. This hasn’t discouraged the smart phone maker from trying to push its Blackberry to the same audience. With the Blackberry Storm priced around the same as the iPhone, RIM is definitely trying to take back some of their former customers. The Mobile Myspace App for Blackberry phones has just been released recently. Combined with the Facebook App which is already available, RIM must be trying to turn a new leaf and leave the old “all business” reputation it had developed.

-Derek

Yesterday, we reported that Gmail will now have video and voice chat capabilities. Well now a video demonstration has been released showcasing the new video and voice chat feature on Gmail. According to Google, the voice/video chat feature uses the same H.264 framework as Youtube and it was built using ordinary Internet streaming protocols that are not forced to run on Google’s Interface. Because of this, according to Google, it leaves it open to third party applications. Check it out the video demo and let us know what you think:

- Geoff

[Source: Youtube]

I know here at Inspiretech, we’ve been eying Circuit City like a flock of starved vultures. In case you didn’t know, Circuit City is the second largest electronics store in the United States and has fallen on some pretty hard times recently. First they closed down about 150 stores and then this week they filed for chapter 11. However, filing for chapter 11 does not mean closure. In fact, Bank of America has given Circuit City a 1.1 billion dollar loan to tide it over and through the Christmas season until it is expected to come out of bankruptcy next year! I’m sure “B of A” has their goons tailing Circuit City executives ready to collect…

Google has just announced that their popular Gmail emailing service will now include video and voice chat capabilities. According to Google representative Jason Freidenfelds, Google wanted to give their users “quicker and easier to communicate with other people by whatever means is best convenient.” Now in order to access the video and voice chat capabilities, you must first install a 2MB plug-in for either PC or Mac and use either Firefox, IE, or Chrome and you must have a camara. So go to your Gmail account and check it out. And remember to come back here to inform us of your experience.

- Geoff

[Source: Gizmodo]

There has been a recall issued to consumers that have notebooks with Sony Lithium-Ion batteries. The recall is affecting notebook owners of HP, Dell, Toshiba and Compaq models manufactured in Japan. The press release stated that there were 19 reports of batteries overheating with 17 reports of fires and two consumers experiencing minor burns.

The Recall affects the following notebooks:

• HP Pavilion: dv1000, dv8000 and zd8000
• Compaq Presario: v2000 and v2400
• HP Compaq: nc6110, nc6120, nc6140, nc6220, nc6230, nx4800, nx4820, nx6110, nx6120, nx9600
• Toshiba Satellite: A70/A75, P30/P5, M30X/M35X, M50/M55
• Toshiba Tecra: A3, A5, S2
• Dell Latitude: 110L
• Dell Inspiron: 1100, 1150, 5100, 5150, 5160

-Ray

[Source: thegadgetblog]

A new study conducted by seven smart computer scientists from University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, San Diego shows that out of 12,500,000 emails sent by spammers, only 1 email receives a response. In order to conduct the study, the computer scientists infiltrated the Storm network, which uses hijacked PCs to relay those damn spamming emails. Although that is about a .00001% response rate, the computer scientists believe that the spammers still make about $7,000 a day with about $3.5 million a year. To be honest, that just annoys me even more. THEY BE SPAMMING YOUUUU!!!!!!

- Geoff

[Source: TechRadar]