AllThingsD » resize

Rejoice! The Kindle Coughs Up Page Numbers

Peter Kafka — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 22:05:30 +0000

Even people who love their Kindles complain about one weird flaw in Amazon’s e-reader: It won’t tell you what page of the book you’re reading. I’ve always assumed this had to do with the fact that the ability to resize type makes “page” a tricky concept for the Kindle software. But that doesn’t matter anymore–Amazon says page numbers, along with other new features, are coming to the e-reader in a software update.

Send Someone You Love the Gift of Google Tech Support

Voices — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 21:08:47 +0000

Google isn’t always known for engineering the most human-centric solutions, but today it opened the door on something special (and decidedly adorkable) for the holidays.

Head on over to teachparentstech.org and you’ll find a little Web form, shrouded in faux brown paper, where you can assemble your virtual tech-support care package.

After selecting to whom it should be addressed, you can pick from about 50 very short videos to attach to the message that the form creates. The videos feature fresh-faced Googlers in brightly colored shirts using plain English and screen-capture video to explain how to do things like resize a photo, use Google chat, get driving directions or find the nearest pizza place.

And the tech subjects seem to be pretty expertly selected as well (we’ve been asked to help our parents on more than a few of these specific problems).

After selecting a salutation, the videos you want to send and an appropriate closing remark, the form spits out a page that can be forwarded to the email of the desired tech noob.

We spoke with Jason Toff, a product marketing manager at Google and the informal leader of teachparentstech. He said that the project was built on the 20 percent time Google gives some staff members to work on separate projects outside of their assignments, and that it was really born out of a need found among his youngish Googley colleagues.

“The idea of parents needing tech support around the holidays really resonated with our core group of about six people. We just sent some emails out to some internal list serves expecting to get a lukewarm response, and over 50 people responded wanting to be in videos explaining some simple tech,” Toff said during our phone call.

Toff said there weren’t any other plans to build out additional products on the teachparentstech domain right now, but he’s hoping to see how this first thing goes and learn from it.

The site went live as of about 9:30 PT this morning and by noon had sent out over 3,000 virtual care packages.

The one pro tip we got from Toff was that if you care to see all the videos available, maybe to do a power-training session, you can head to teachparentstech.org/watch where all the available videos are displayed together.

Now, if only Google would buy up santagr.am and santatracker.com, our very Google holiday would be complete.

IBM Layoffs: 1,674 and Counting

John Paczkowski — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:00:48 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Agilent "Resizes" Employee Paychecks… to Zero

John Paczkowski — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:40:38 +0000

Black Thursday fell on more than just IBM (IBM) today. Agilent also announced layoffs this morning. The company plans to sack 2,700 employees–14 percent of its workforce.

With revenue in its electronic measurement unit down roughly 30 percent from 2008 to the lowest level in Agilent’s 10-year history, the company had little choice but to “resize” that business. “For Agilent to realize its full potential, we must have a financially healthy company and a solidly profitable Electronic Measurement business,” said Bill Sullivan, Agilent president and chief executive officer. “We will move quickly to resize the EM businesses to the new business levels, align resources to the best market opportunities, and position the company for the new economic environment. We have been very aggressive to date in addressing the downturn in electronic measurement markets. However, business remains severely depressed, and there are no prospects for a meaningful recovery in the foreseeable future.”

Ugly news, especially since “foreseeable future” translates to “until 2011-2013,” according to Agilent (A) CFO Adrian Dillon. “We don’t expect (demand) to come back any time soon, so we’ve got to fundamentally change the cost structure,” he told Reuters. “We will not see a 2008 level of activity at least for two to four years.”

[Image credit: someecards]

Agilent "Resizes" Employee Paychecks… to Zero

John Paczkowski — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:40:38 +0000

Black Thursday fell on more than just IBM (IBM) today. Agilent also announced layoffs this morning. The company plans to sack 2,700 employees–14 percent of its workforce.

[Image credit: someecards]