We all hate Google Local don’t we? Well, fear not my readers. Google Maps is back! WoooHOOOOO!!!!! It’s very exciting isnt’ it? Yep. I’m excited. For those of you who wrote in to google about bringing Google Maps back, WAY TO GO!!!!
So I don’t usually report on financial news, but I’m pretty impressed by this. Apple’s year over year growth for the last quarter is about 30%. Revenue jumped by around a billion dollars. Profits jumped about $100 million or so. While Wall Street was expecting more from Apple, I have to say that they are full of crap. Steve Jobs and company have managed a huge turnaround over the last few years and it’s nothing short of phenominal. Also of some interest is that this was Apple’s second highest quarterly sales in Apple history. For a tech company as old as Apple to survive this long and now be having this much success speaks volumes.
I haven’t really been posting as much this week as maybe I should, but fear not great things are happening at The Mole. Well, really this isn’t so much about this site as maybe some other things. First, I’m now a blogger for Blogcritics.org, which is cool. Second, I’ve been trying to optimize this site a bit more. If you’ve been here more than once in the last month you’ve probably noticed some changes now and then. Some are cosmetic and others are just fun, like tagging. For the most part I have this blog the way I want it, but I might be adding either recent posts or related posts to the individual blog pages. I haven’t really decided on that yet, so that’s still a bit up in the air. Last, but not least… (more…)
Hello all! For those of you who read blogcritics.org, you might have seen the Halo 3 / Halo Online post I made about a month ago show up there. It was basically a reprint of the origninal article, but once again it got a pretty good response. Anyhow, I’ve joined the sinister cabal of elite bloggers known as blogcritcs. How cool is that? Now I get to infest a sinister cabal with my sinister rumors! Wooohooo!!! Seriously, I’m pretty excited about this. It will definately be a great opportunity to improve on my writing and maybe even get some more visitors here. Either way, check out blogcritics.org. It’s a cool site with lots of great people blogging for them.
Bob Parsons, the founder of GoDaddy wrote an interesting post about the new .eu domain name registration scandal. Basically the EU domain registry made it way too easy to become an official domain name registrar. For as little as $12,000 pretty much anybody can be a domain name registrar. From there you could landgrab as many .eu domain names. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that with some domains selling for six figures, there is plenty of money to be made from buying up .eu domains early and often. It’s a good read. You should check it out.
I suppose since every other blog on the face of the planet is buzzing with this fantastic news, I should say something. Yes, now the Mac can run Windows XP and Apple is supporting it. How cool is that? It’s pretty cool. It’s phenominal. It’s outrageous. It’s the best version of Windows XP ever. *drinks more kool-aid* OOOHHHHHH YEAH!!!!!!
According to a report in Next Generation, Wal-Mart will soon stop selling UMD movies and most of Hollywood is also backing out of Sony’s portable movie format. Why? Sales of UMD movies have died completely. None of the UMD movies are making any money. Chalk this one up as another Sony format failure.
While Dick Cheney might have won the super duper oops award for accidentally shooting a fellow hunter a month ago, Google strikes back this month with its own blunder. According to the official Google blog they deleted their own blog by accident. Now, I don’t understand how this happens, but then again I’ve only been writing The Mole for the last few weeks. Perhaps it’s not the Google bloggers’ fault. I think it’s probably something as simple as the ghost inside the machine that is the Googleplex decided to play an early April Fool’s day joke. It’s three days early, but who cares? This is easily funnier than 75% of most April Fool’s day jokes. Way to go Google Ghost in the Machine(beta)!
So, this week we found out that the consumer version of Windows Vista is going to be late. It probably won’t ship until January or February. Yep, right after the holiday season. I’m sure Dell and others aren’t too happy about this. At the same time, an article came out this week stating that Microsoft has to rewrite 60% of the media center code and that they are scrambling Xbox programmers to the task. The same day that seemingly every tech news blog reported that, Microsoft came out in public to throw the b.s. flag. I for one am glad that they did so to what was obviously a huge lie. (more…)
Well, sometimes rumors do come true and this is one of those times. Today Dell announced that they are indeed buying Alienware. As I speculated a couple weeks ago, Dell will let Alienware act as a standalone unit and that a primary reason for buying them was their excellent brand:
“Alienware’s products are an excellent complement to Dell’s own line of high-performance computers designed for gaming, enthusiast and media content customers. In addition to offering high-quality, high-performance products, Alienware has tremendous brand appeal with consumers and creative business professionals,” said Michael Dell, chairman.
Yep, brand appeal and high-end products. Alienware is going to be Dell’s new Caddilac. It’s sleek, sexy, and has high profit margins. All in all, I think this is a great move for Dell. Way to go Dell, you’ve made another step into a much more mature business model.
