Eric Johnson

Recent Posts by Eric Johnson

AllThingsD Week in Review: BlackBerry Is Just Resting, and YouTube Goes Mobile First

RIM_Bring_Out_Your_Dead380In case you missed anything, here’s a quick roundup of some of the news that powered AllThingsD this week:

  1. Amid great uncertainty, BlackBerry publicly pledged this week that it’s not dead yet and, in fact, will rise again. Meanwhile, a new suitor for the once-dominant mobile company emerged: Lenovo is confidentially exploring BlackBerry’s books as it mulls a potential bid.
  2. Since April, Yahoo has made a big push around its Facebook-esque “stream ads” that show up within the scrolling feeds of the company’s finance, sports and news pages. Sources this week said that it’s an even bigger initiative than previously thought: CEO Marissa Mayer hopes stream ads will one day be Yahoo’s greatest driver of new revenue.
  3. This week, security outfit QuarksLab claimed that Apple’s messaging service iMessage was not secure, and could be opened up by either curious Apple employees or by a government mandate. But on Friday, Apple vehemently denied that claim.
  4. After a decent Q3 earnings report, Google showed a little bit more of its hand re video plans. CEO Larry Page announced new numbers that suggest mobile is more important to YouTube than ever.
  5. Sources said Twitter plans to significantly update its direct-messaging product in the near future, bringing it to the forefront as rival messaging apps like Snapchat and WhatsApp continue to thrive.
  6. Who wants an iPhone 5c? Apparently, about half the number of people who want the more expensive 5s. Make no mistake, it’s still selling like an iPhone, but a growing chorus of supply-chain-trimming rumors suggest that Apple’s expectations for the device might have been too high.
  7. A long list of tech titans and well known companies are supporting the nonprofit Code.org as it tries to bring computer science to more schools. But two names in its first educational program might jump out more than others: Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, who will be leading coding tutorials during Code.org’s worldwide “Hour of Code.”
  8. After Apple CEO Tim Cook hired and then fired retail head John Browett last year, the question of who would replace him became hotly debated. Now, we finally have an answer: Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts, who will join in the spring.
  9. It’s already possible to send cash to friends or relatives online through services like PayPal or Venmo, but this week, Square unveiled its entry in the field. In All Things Reviewed, Walt Mossberg reviewed Square Cash and found it to be “simpler and more private” than its established competitors.
  10. IBM turned in disappointing earnings on Wednesday, and it’s worse than a quarterly problem: The longtime No. 2 software-revenue company in the world, behind Microsoft, has now slipped in the rankings. Its replacement? A press-release-happy Oracle.

To stay on top of the latest, please follow AllThingsD on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to our daily email newsletter.

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »

The problem with the Billionaire Savior phase of the newspaper collapse has always been that billionaires don’t tend to like the kind of authority-questioning journalism that upsets the status quo.

— Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review about the promise of Pierre Omidyar’s new media venture with Glenn Greenwald