Yesterday, the day after after Google aired its first national commercial on the Super Bowl, an exec at a rival Internet company marveled at what high favorable scores the “Parisian Love” advertisement got, adding that the possibilities of spoofs of it were also endless. “I have a feeling that making fun of it will probably be a good thing for Google,” sighed the exec, who would dearly like such attention. And, indeed, it did not take two seconds before the take-offs on the ad–an unusually sentimental, but effective, ongoing story about love in Paris, using only Google’s iconic search box–appeared. Read More »

Here’s a metric to consider in advance of The Mobile World Congress next week and the likely debut of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Mobile 7 operating system: As widely maligned as it is, Windows Mobile was still running on 18 percent of U.S. smartphones at the end of 2009, according to comScore. Read More »

A former Universal Music executive, now headed to Yahoo, explains concisely why his former employer and the other big guys are just playing out the string: CD sales are wasting away, and the digital boost they were counting on simply isn’t big enough. Read More »

Redpoint Ventures announced that it had closed a new $400 million fund to invest in early-stage start-ups in the “social and mobile Internet, cloud computing and clean technology spaces.” Is the closing a sign that things are looking up for the venture business after one of the toughest years in a dozen, with the amount VCs made in 2009 dropping 37 percent, according to a recent report? Who knows–but here’s the skinny on the Redpoint IV fund. Read More »

As high-profile cyber attacks, like the one that recently hit Google Inc., become more common, Internet security is getting more attention at commercial organizations and especially in the government. Read More »

Today, BoomTown motored down to the Sunnyvale HQ of Yahoo, this time with a tiny bit of trepidation. Ok, not that much, but some! Why? Because CEO Carol Bartz had invited me to be the first in a new speaker series for employees at the Internet giant, called “Yahoo from the ‘Outside In,’” due to my intense–some might say obsessive–interest in the company. The twist: Bartz herself conducted the interview with me in front of about 600 Yahoos gathered in its URL’s Cafe, the main cafeteria at the company. Read More »

Verizon Wireless said Monday that its recent blocking of parts of 4chan was caused by “potentially disruptive” traffic from the popular site. “Our network security system found traffic from some of the 4chan web sites that were potentially disruptive of the Verizon Wireless network and could affect our customers’ use of their services,” Jeffrey Nelson, a spokesman for the wireless carrier, said. Read More »

Apple’s refusal to support Flash on the iPhone, and soon the iPad as well, might not be a death knell for Flash, but it will surely hasten its decline if Adobe isn’t careful. Read More »

Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site. (Click on the image to see a bigger version.) Read More »

Barnes & Noble’s e-reader entry was supposed to have one big advantage over the Kindle–you could buy one at the retailer’s stores. But it has been a long time coming, and in the meantime, you may have heard about another compelling e-reader heading to market. Read More »

Howard Stern told listeners this morning that he is considering leaving Sirius XM to become a judge on American Idol, according the TheWrap.com. Read More »

Google Inc. is set to unveil a new feature to Gmail designed to make it easier and faster for users to share media and status updates with friends, according to people familiar with the matter. These people said Google could launch the new feature, which aims to make its Gmail email application more social, as soon as this week. Read More »

The iPad’s lower-than-expected price may go lower still if the device doesn’t perform as well at market as Apple hopes. Recounting his recent meeting with some executives from the company in a research note issued last night, Credit Suisse analyst Bill Shope said Apple is quite willing to get even more aggressive with iPad pricing. Read More »

Since its launch in January, AppMakr has built several thousand apps for the iTunes store. AppMakr was originally a side service offered by PointAbout, a technology consulting company based out of Washington, D.C. In its beta form, AppMakr listed a $2,000 starting price for aspiring app makers to sign up, in addition to the price to build the actual app. Read More »

Next week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft is likely to unveil Windows Mobile 7, the new version of its mobile operating system, trying to create some excitement around its foundering mobile strategy. “Foundering” is probably kind, given the innovative strides both Google and Apple have made in the smartphone arena in recent years by comparison. So is a new mobile OS–along with “Project Pink,” to create a new Microsoft-made device–going to cut it? Or should the tech giant buy its way back into the game? Read More »