victory

Done With Silly Game Shows, IBM's Watson Finds a Job

Arik Hesseldahl in Enterprise on February 17, 2011 at 7:45 am PT

Having licked the puny humans on TV games shows, the Watson supercomputer, or at least one like it, will be put to work on ways to help doctors make better decisions.

SAP Plans to Fight $1.3 Billion Judgment in Oracle Case

Arik Hesseldahl in Enterprise on February 3, 2011 at 3:03 pm PT

SAP believes the jury was too generous in its award to Oracle and that the damages are not proportionate to its subsidiary’s offense of intellectual-property theft.

Liveblogging the Facebook Mobile Event: Single Sign-On for Social

Kara Swisher in News on November 3, 2010 at 10:55 am PT

BoomTown arrived late to the Facebook mobile event for the press due to traffic related to the parade for the San Francisco Giants’ World Series victory–and where I would much rather be right now. Go Giants! In any case, I am here in the cafeteria of Facebook again, where the company continues its attempts to take over the known digital universe before Google does. The latest parry: Single sign-on!

Liveblogging Yahoo-Nokia Partnership Announcement: Email and Maps Horsetrading

Kara Swisher in News on May 24, 2010 at 7:06 am PT

As BoomTown reported last week, Yahoo planned to announce a partnership deal with Nokia this morning, centering on email and mapping. Here’s the–very brief–liveblog of the press conference about it.

Exclusive: Yahoo Poised to Unveil "Project Nike" Partnership Deal With Nokia at Monday Event

Kara Swisher in News on May 20, 2010 at 11:38 pm PT

Today, Yahoo sent a press conference invite for Monday in New York to reveal “an exciting announcement about providing global consumers with rich online and mobile experiences, and bringing forward a new era in keeping consumers connected.” That’s all it took to get BoomTown on the horn to find out what that meant. And, according to sources, that will be a deal with Finland-based mobile phone giant Nokia to build Yahoo’s email, search and other applications and services into a range of its devices.

Project Alesia: News Corp.'s Roman Battle Cry–Does That Cast Googlers as the Gauls? (Plus Video!)

Kara Swisher in News on December 23, 2009 at 11:23 am PT

While Internet companies such as Google use baked goods as names for their key strategic initiatives–recent ones related to its Android mobile operating system were called Donut and Eclair, for example–aggressive media giant News Corp. is definitely not going for sweetness in its unusual selection of a code name for its high-profile digital content effort. That would be Project Alesia, a moniker that comes from a vicious siege in ancient times widely considered to be one of the more decisive battles in history. And that is apparently what top News Corp. execs think is the best way to describe their plans for stopping the decimation of premium content in the digital age and transforming their business to take advantage of new means of distribution.

Jai Ho! An Unfortunate Oscar-Winning Song (and Dance)

Kara Swisher in News on February 24, 2009 at 8:00 am PT

Despite the little-movie-that-could, “Slumdog Millionaire,” sweeping the Oscars on Sunday night, it was well-nigh impossible to find a really good online video of the amazing Bollywood-style dance routine done during the closing credits to the also award-winning song, “Jai Ho!” Unfortunately, the A.R. Rahman tune (two well-deserved Oscars for him!) in the catchy song-and-dance number seemed to be subject to takedowns all over the Web just when it probably was a good time to put it out and generate even more box office buzz for “Slumdog.”