downloading

Verizon’s ThunderBolt Moves Like Lightning

Walt Mossberg in Personal Technology on March 23, 2011 at 6:19 pm PT

Verizon’s ThunderBolt 4G cellphone is a speed demon, zipping past rival 4G phones’ cellular-data speeds and even past many home land-line Internet connections.

New Way to Check Out eBooks

Katherine Boehret in The Digital Solution on February 22, 2011 at 4:21 pm PT

Get out your library cards: Now you can wirelessly download electronic books from your local library using the Apple iPad or an Android tablet.

Qualcomm CEO Explains What Happened to Smartbooks

Ina Fried in Mobile on December 2, 2010 at 6:30 am PT

A year ago, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs was talking a lot about smartbooks. Today, well, not so much. For those who have already forgotten what the smartbook even was, the idea was to have a low-cost device that looked a lot like a netbook but offered far better battery life and instant-on capabilities. Once Apple released the iPad, though, everyone started focusing on tablet devices rather than on little notebooks. “Obviously, tablets are the flavor of the day,” Jacobs said in an interview on Tuesday.

No One Is Happy With the FCC Chairman's Speech, Except Broadband Investors

Arik Hesseldahl in Enterprise on December 1, 2010 at 12:52 pm PT

Everyone has something to say about today’s speech by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski on the subject of net neutrality. Having been blocked in the courts from imposing sanctions on Comcast for throttling users of BitTorrent, the commission has been spinning its wheels trying to find a way to nudge the broadband industry in a direction toward treating all Internet content fairly.

Is Spotify Spot On? Co-Founder Daniel Ek Talks About the Hot Online Music Start-Up!

Kara Swisher in News on September 22, 2009 at 4:14 pm PT

There’s no question that Spotify is the latest hot start-up of the moment, which would be super annoying to BoomTown–who is easily irked by never-ending froth around Web 2.0 companies–if co-founder Daniel Ek were not so sharp and the digital-music-on-demand service he created not so nifty. But, indeed, Ek turned out to be a very refreshing and level-headed serial entrepreneur in an interview I had with him yesterday in London. Here’s the video.

Sale of iLike to MySpace–$13.5 Million in Cash, $6 Million for Talent Retention–Delayed Over Tax Issues (Really!)…Plus, the List of Other Suitors!

Kara Swisher in News on August 17, 2009 at 11:25 pm PT

The board of iLike planned a meeting earlier tonight to go over a buyout offer by MySpace, several sources close to the situation said. But it was suddenly canceled because of some thorny tax implications related to the talent-retention part of the deal to purchase the social music start-up. This does not mean the pending acquisition is in jeopardy, sources said, and it could be on track to be signed as early as today, barring any more complications. What’s also been unclear is the actual price the social networking giant is paying for iLike, which has been reported as about $20 million. In fact, only $13.5 million will be paid in cash, with $6 million slated for forward payments to retain key talent.

Here’s One Way to Get People to Pay for Music: Labels Win $2 Million Verdict in Downloading Trial

Peter Kafka in Media on June 19, 2009 at 3:00 am PT

Don’t want to pay $1 for a song on iTunes? Try $80,000 a pop. That’s what a federal jury in Minneapolis has told a woman to pay the music industry for illegally downloading 24 songs, bringing her total bill to $1.92 million. Her response: “Good luck trying to get it, because you can’t get blood out of a turnip.”