11 posts and columns on product development

Exclusive: High-Profile Hires for Palm–Nokia’s Ari Jaaksi and Samsung’s Victoria Coleman

in News on October 14, 2010 at 5:48 pm PT

Earlier this month, Ari Jaaksi resigned as head of Nokia’s MeeGo division, citing “personal reasons” as the cause for his departure. Turns out “personal reasons” was actually a euphemism for “I’m joining Palm.” Sources close to the company tell me that Jaaksi has been hired on as senior vice president of webOS at Hewlett-Packard’s Palm division.

Zynga Buys Austin-Based Challenge Games

in News on June 3, 2010 at 1:26 am PT

Zynga, the online gaming powerhouse, has acquired Austin, Texas-based Challenge Games. The social game start-up will be renamed Zynga Austin and be focused on product development. Backed by Sequoia Capital and Globespan Capital Partners, Challenge focuses on virtual goods games, such as Warstorm.

Yahoo Product Head and CTO Ari Balogh Speaks!

in News on July 2, 2009 at 2:05 pm PT

In BoomTown’s bold quest to annoyingly stick a Flip digital video camera in the face of every Yahoo senior exec, this week I worked the last nerve of its CTO and EVP of Products, Aristotle “Ari” Balogh. Actually, the 45-year-old Balogh is a very calm and pleasant man, especially considering the huge responsibility that has been foisted on him by CEO Carol Bartz to rejigger how Yahoo makes its products and services and deploy its technology in a more efficient, centralized and, most of all, innovative manner. To explain all this, Balogh sat down with me twice–he is clearly a glutton for punishment–to talk about where Yahoo stood as it sought to dig itself out of its long slump and reemerge as the potent Internet force it once was.
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RIM Product Line More FrankenBerry Than CrackBerry

in News on June 26, 2009 at 11:00 am PT

With the Palm Pre and iPhone 3GS in stores and the myTouch 3G, T-Mobile’s second Google Android phone, headed to market, is Research in Motion’s product lineup beginning to look a bit dated? Which leads to another question: Has RIM’s success made it too complacent? GC Research analyst Tero Kuittinen believes it has.
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Ex-Yahoo Ad Exec Karnstedt to Efficient Frontier

in News on April 2, 2009 at 11:16 am PT

Former top Yahoo advertising exec David Karnstedt, who has been parked at a Silicon Valley venture firm since he left the company, has been named president and CEO of Efficient Frontier. Interestingly, another former Yahoo exec, Ellen Siminoff, has also been CEO at the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based search engine marketing firm. She is now chairman.
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Voices

Tired of April Fools Gags? Wait, There’s More.

in News on April 2, 2009 at 4:51 am PT

Jokes dreamed up by tech companies for April Fool’s Day may not be spectacularly funny. But one can’t help but notice the level of effort put in, which sometimes seems to rival the intensity of their product-development efforts.

Yahoo Content Model Gets Remixed as Product Development Is "Globally" Centralized

in News on February 20, 2009 at 5:45 am PT

Will Yahoo’s media properties fall flat with sweeping new changes that are afoot that will drastically change the way the company bakes its content offerings? Or will the ability to have a single, highly scaleable, centrally developed architecture make the media programming Yahoo delivers more responsive and flexible in the era of fast-twitch bloggers (all while cutting costs)? According to many sources inside and outside the company, product development for Yahoo’s heavily trafficked media operations–including its powerful News, Finance and Sports sites–is set to be moved under Ash Patel, who is EVP of the company’s Audience Product Division.
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Voices

THQ Slides on Weak Outlook; Where's Wall-E?

in News on November 5, 2008 at 5:09 pm PT

Videogame publisher THQ saw its shares take a dive this afternoon after failing to meet its previous forecast and providing weak guidance for the next fiscal year. The failure was largely due to poor sales and multiple returns of its Wall-E game. The company will close five studios and cut marketing and general expenses as a result.