Yahoo’s Product Runway: Are You In or Out?

I am here at Yahoo HQ in Sunnyvale, Calif., to check out “Product Runway,” which is the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s attempt to show that it can still innovate.
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Exclusive: Rackspace to Acquire Anso Labs

Rackspace acquires a team best known for its work building a computing cloud for NASA.

News Byte

Time Warner Cable Acquires NaviSite for $230 Million

Time Warner Cable Inc. announced today it had reached a deal to acquire NaviSite, a cloud services and Web-hosting company, for $230 million in cash. Time-Warner, which is the second largest cable-TV provider in the U.S. as well as a significant player in residential broadband, said the transaction would expand its commercial broadband business by providing an entry into the business of selling managed services for small- and medium-size companies. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2011.

Weathering the Storm, RIM Makes Its Business Case in Boston

Mobilized is in Beantown Thursday to hear Research In Motion talk about its plans for the enterprise. The event, at the Marriott Copley Place downtown, kicked off around 10 am ET. Here are the highlights.

I'm With the Band: Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda Talks About Online Fan Collaboration Contest

It’s nice to hear enthusiasm on the part of Linkin Park band member Mike Shinoda about an innovative-for-the-music-industry effort to give fans a chance to be part of the iconic Grammy-winning rock band. While some artists or content creators cringe at the ongoing flood of user-generated material that has drastically changed the industry, Shinoda is hoping to find some real talent via a new online contest, called “Linkin Park, Featuring You,” that gives anyone an opportunity to collaborate with the band to produce an original song based on some of the tracks from the forthcoming single “The Catalyst.”

YouTube Does Some More (Modest) Boasting: “Growth Is Definitely Good for Our Bottom Line”

More love from Google for its oft-maligned YouTube unit: Last week, Google officials went out of their way to praise the video site’s progress and said it was well on its way from money pit to profit center. Today, the company gives YouTube a pat on the back via an atta-boy blog post. Not much new here, but the message is that the Google folks are feeling ever more confident about YouTube’s prospects. But not enough to actually talk about them in concrete terms.
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Microsoft Announces Google Apps Killer Technical Preview

It was more than a decade ago that Microsoft’s Outlook email client first became accessible over the Web. Now the rest of the company’s flagship Office suite is following suit. At the opening of its Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans this morning, Microsoft announced a “technical preview” of Office 2010 and revealed that some of its key applications–Word, Excel and PowerPoint–will be available over the Web in 2010. For free.
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Here Comes the Video Shakeout: Joost Scales Down, CEO Mike Volpi Steps Out

Here’s the beginning of the inevitable online video shakeout: Joost, the once-hyped video service that was supposed to rival Google’s YouTube, is restructuring to focus on “white label” services, i.e., a back end for other video players. The site is laying off the majority of its 100-plus employees, and CEO Mike Volpi is out, replaced by Matt Zelesko, who had been SVP of engineering.
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An Indie Label Sounds Off: Why We Don’t Love Grooveshark

When a big music label sues a scrappy Web music start-up, most people tend to sympathize reflexively with the little guy. But not everyone. Here’s the case against Grooveshark–not from EMI, which has hauled them into court, but from an indie that by all rights ought to be working with Grooveshark: “The service is just ripping off the band.”
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Credit Suisse Far Better at Analyzing Derivatives Than YouTube Infrastructure Costs

YouTube may be losing money, but it’s not losing nearly as much as some claim. Certainly not the $470 million that Credit Suisse projected in April, citing massive infrastructure costs. According to IT research outfit RampRate, a more realistic assessment of YouTube’s operating loss for 2009 is $174 million, nearly $300 million less than Credit Suisse’s estimate.
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