Dawn Kawamoto   Year:June 10, 2008 10:24 PM PDT   Source Site:newsblog

Yahoo offered up a little clarity Tuesday on its controversial employee severance plan and how things could play out should major investor Carl Icahn win his proxy fight to unseat Yahoos current board. Under Yahoos employee severance plan, as previously noted, Icahns proxy fight would set the stage for triggering the severance plan if he wins a majority of the board seats with his dissident directors at the annual meeting on Aug. 1. The plan would then kick into action should the new dissident Yahoo board terminate an employee or greatly change their duties and responsibilities, prompting them to leave. The plan would remain in affect for two years after the new board would be seated. Attorneys representing Yahoo shareholders filed a brief late Monday, asking the court to hold a tria...

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Chris Ziegler   Year:by , posted Jun 11th 2008 at 12:58AM   Source Site:engadget

Paris who? Sony Ericssons let yet another one slip out of its fingers before the official announcement, this time around a killer slider said to be the Cyber-shot C905, codenamed "Shiho." If the rumors pan out, its got one heck of a rap sheet, too, starting off with an 8.1 -- yes, eight point flippin one -- megapixel camera with both xenon and LED flashes (for still and video capture, respectively), GPS, TV out, DLNA certification, and HSDPA in your choice of European and American flavors. The screens apparently just QVGA, but in light of everything else were hearing, we might just be willing to let that slide. Itll apparently be announced on the 17th of the month in gold, silver, and black for a fourth quarter release. Wowza! [Thanks, Adrian]...

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Jim Kerstetter   Year:June 10, 2008 9:01 PM PDT   Source Site:newsblog

Glassdoors data shows Yahoos Jerry Yang became very unpopular May 14. (Credit: Glassdoor.com) Soon after May 14, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yangs approval rating among an admittedly small group of Yahoo employees tanked. Not surprisingly, that was the day word spread that corporate raider Carl Icahn was launching his proxy fight against Yang and Yahoos embattled board of directors. I know this because of a start-up called Glassdoor.com. While Glassdoors service, scheduled to go into a public beta at 9:01 PDT Tuesday, is certainly helpful for nosy reporters who want a read on what employees think of their bosses, thats not the 12-person companys only intention. Glassdoor executives say they want to be the TripAdvisor of the workplace. Founded by veterans of Microsoft and Expedia (Rich Barton, ...

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Posted by Jason D. OGrady @ 11:10 am   Year:June 10th, 2008   Source Site:zdnet

June 10th, 2008 Snow Leopard specifics revealed Posted by Jason D. OGrady @ 11:10 am Categories: Software, WWDC, Mac OS, 10.6 Tags: Apple Macintosh, Apple Inc., Multi-core, Apple Mac OS X, Apple Mac OS, Operating Systems, Software, Jason D. OGrady Apple has released more information on Mac OS X Snow Leopard which was majorly glossed-over during yesterdays Stevenote at WWDC. The new OS now has product pages for both server and client which claim that it will dramatically reduces the footprint of Mac OS X, making it even more efficient for users, and giving them back valuable hard drive space for their music and photos. According to MacRumors: Some early screenshots from the Developer seed of Snow Leopard do indeed show significantly smaller application file sizes over c...

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Darren Murph   Year:by , posted Jun 11th 2008 at 12:58AM   Source Site:engadget

You can find a washer just about anywhere that promises to consume less water than most of its rivals, but finding one thats "virtually waterless" is still a chore. Yeah, there was that one contraption from Singapore a few years back, but cmon, its no bona fide washing machine. Nevertheless, a University of Leeds spin-out company -- dubbed Xeros -- has already received ?500,000 in order to commercialize a device that "uses less than 2% of the water and energy of a conventional washing machine." Instead, it relies on a plethora of plastic chips that are tumbled with the clothes to remove stains. Were not sure how comfortable we really are with the thought of that, but folks that have already warmed to the idea can look for these things to hit the UK market in 2009. [Via MetaEfficient]...

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Holly Jackson   Year:June 10, 2008 5:23 PM PDT   Source Site:newsblog

The PoGo inkless printer produces wallet-size pictures that can be turned into stickers. (Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com) Polaroid, the company that brought the world the iconic snap-and-print camera, is ready to introduce a new instant-photo product fit for the Digital Age. The PoGo, a mobile, inkless printer with a cute name, is small enough to fit in a pocket and prints wallet-size pictures that can be turned into stickers. The company--which continues its attempt to transition from an analog past to a digital future--hopes the Polaroid-on-the-go will revolutionize instant photo printing. The PoGo is small enough to fit in a pocket. (Credit: James Martin/CNET News.com) Polaroid showed the little 8-ounce PoGo to CNET News.com on Tuesday. The product receives images vi...

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Donald Melanson   Year:by , posted Jun 11th 2008 at 12:58AM   Source Site:engadget

Shuttle may have been the first out of the gate with this minimalist design (presumably OEM, and likely only a sign of things to come), but thats not keeping Princeton from doing its own thing with its new PTB-TMW19B tablet display, which just got official for Japan today. While the exteriors identical to the Shuttle, the Princeton model takes a slight dip in resolution to 1440 x 900, although the company makes up for that somewhat by including a stylus and some handwriting recognition software. Otherwise, you can expect a 5 ms response time, an 850: 1 contrast ratio, and even a pair of built-in speakers. Look for this one to set you back ?128,000 (or just under $1,200) when it hits Japan later this month. ...

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Stefanie Olsen   Year:June 10, 2008 5:16 PM PDT   Source Site:newsblog

For years, people have wondered when they would be able to voice a command to a digital device, have it understand the query, and respond with some degree of intelligence. That day still isnt here, but speech-technology companies like Nuance are working on it. On Tuesday, Nuance, maker of Dragon Naturally Speaking for the desktop, said that it has developed a prototype for voice search on Apples iPhone. In August, the company plans to start selling a downloadable application for the iPhone that lets them speak a question to the phone to retrieve search results from Google or another search engine, according to Steve Chambers, Nuances president of mobile and consumer services. Chambers said that Nuance hasnt set a price for the application yet. The prototype, called open-voice search, d...

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Register Hardware: From the lab to the living room   Year:12 hours ago   Source Site:technorati

From the Technology channel ? HPs VoodooPC challenges MacBook Air on thinness http://www.reghardware.co.uk/ 2008/ 06/ 10/ voodoo_air_challenger/ Most Wanted HDTVs Samsung LN52A650 52" LCD TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, 50,000:1, HDTV) - from $1999.99 Panasonic TH-50PZ800U 50" Plasma TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, 30,000:1, HDTV) - from $2188.00 Samsung LN46A550 46" LCD TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, 30,000:1, HDTV) - from $1299.99 Samsung LN-46A650 46" LCD TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, 50,000:1, HDTV) - from $1825.00 Sony BRAVIA XBR KDL-52XBR4 52" LCD TV (Widescreen, 1920x1080, 2000:1, HDTV) - from $2999.00 Data from Pricegrabber Review Finder Accessories Latest Review Top Rated iRobot Roomba 560 robot vacuum cleaner Acer TravelMate 8204WLMi Core Duo 12 hours ago Register Hardware: From...

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Joshua Fruhlinger   Year:by , posted Jun 11th 2008 at 12:58AM   Source Site:engadget

Some wily web browsers have found a job listing at Nintendo of America that suggests the game company is finally getting serious about USB support for the Wii. The job search, found a few days ago, was for a "Software/Harware Tester" who can execute a "test plan for Wiis USB devices." Some think this could mean compatibility for external USB storage devices like hard drives and flash drives given the Wiis limited 512MB internal memory. We, however, hope this means some sort of support for USB keyboards. Its about time, isnt it, Nintendo?...

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Elinor Mills   Year:June 10, 2008 4:59 PM PDT   Source Site:newsblog

Antivirus software vendor Kaspersky is launching an international effort to try to crack the encryption used in a "blackmailer" virus that locks up data on a victims computer. The company announced the "Stop the Gpcode Virus" initiative Monday and extended a public invitation to all cryptography experts and other researchers, saying it has sufficient information about the virus to enable experts to begin working on factoring the RSA key. Kaspersky also created a special forum for the effort. Kaspersky Lab said last week that it detected a new version of the ransomware type of Gpcode Virus that essentially holds your data hostage until you pay up. It encrypts files on the hard drive using an RSA algorithm with a 1024-bit key and leaves a message that advises the victim to buy a decrypt...

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