Author: Rocco Penn

It isn’t the first time that 4Chan has gone down and it won’t be the last, but this one is special. There were 3 consecutive days with very little uptime, something that the photo-sharing, meme-creating website has never experienced.  A massive DDoS is to blame. For it to keep the site down for this long, a site that is accustomed to supporting 1.6 million visitors a day, “massive” might be an understatement. It comes as founder Moot prepared to turn the site’s community support towards American Censorship Day. The site was back up just in time to assist with the protest….

Last week saw one of the biggest buzz buildups surround a game in history as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 launched today. While debates, reviews, and pwning videos flood the internet this week surrounding the first-person shooter, another game is getting ready to launch next week. Fittingly, the buzz is building from the shadows for Assassin’s Creed Revelations. They wouldn’t have it any other way. The third game in the series to feature Ezio (and 4th overall) will outsell the previous 2 easily and is already a contender for Game of the Year even before it’s out. The following may not be as large…

If there was any doubt about the difference in marketing budgets between rival first-person shooters Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, this video will dispel that doubt. Starring Sam Worthington, Jonah Hill and Dwight Howard, the minute-and-a-half trailer puts the action star, the comedy star, and the basketball star into the game. Worthington plays “The Vet” and his cohorts are “The n00bs” as the game, due to be released next week, apparently needs star power more than storyline or gameplay to bring it to the attention of the masses. Then again, anyone who enjoys first-person…

The wagons are circled at the Netflix camp as hundreds of thousands of subscribers cancelled in the last few months, but that doesn’t seem to scare the folks at Disney as they just renewed and expanded the contract between Netflix and ABC. Stocks have dropped by over 70% since the summer after recent debacles and poor decisions by the entertainment provider. That didn’t stop ABC from renewing current shows and adding Alias and Switched at Birth to the Netflix catalog. They also added Lost and Ugly Betty to the streaming segment….

In so many things, understanding comes by following the money. It works in many criminal cases, political decisions, and societal sentiment. It also happens in the world of eCommerce. That being the case, it makes sense that as more money is being spent on tablets, more money is being spent through tablets. That’s the premise supported in this study by our friends at Monetate: It’s easy to dismiss tablet computers as a passing fad, used only by hobbyists with time and money on their hands. But in reality, tablets are sweeping the nation – and, in many ways, totally re-inventing ecommerce. Here’s…

Steve Ballmer can never be called shy. Within moments of opening his appearance oat the Web 2.0 Summit this week, he started his offensive against Google with jabs about their Apps cloud collaboration software and Android, then went after the Apple iPhone. As a speaker at the event 2 years ago, Ballmer lauded the recently-released Bing. Yesterday, he noted that Bing’s reach had more than doubled since then, going from 7% market share to 15% itself and twice that when you factor in Bing-powered search such as Yahoo!. “Together with Yahoo, we’re between 25 percent and 30 percent market share,” Ballmer…

Smartphone season unofficially started last week with the release of the iPhone 4S. As Android phone makers try to capture their share of the lucrative Christmas market, the volleying for differentiators takes different angles to be as appealing as possible to consumers. For the Motorola Droid Razr, their gimmick is thickness (or lack thereof). This “impossibly thin”smartphone is equipped with a stainless-steel core, a Gorilla Glass screen and a nanotechnology Splash-guard. Motorola Mobility President Sanjay Jha said the 7.1mm-thick device is the world’s thinnest. Here are some of…

Jobs are scarce in most sectors. Silicon Valley is one of those rare areas where the top tech talent is actually being aggressively sought. They aren’t fighting for jobs as much as the companies are fighting for them. One of the most important ways that a company is able to differentiate itself is by offering perks that others do not. It goes well-beyond having 401K and medical insurance. In the competitive world of tech-talent acquisition, many of the bigger companies go out of their way to make sure their employees are nurtured and feel special. Whether it’s onsite breakfast and daily catered…

When costs are high and demand is low, it’s time to cut out the middle man. That seems to be what Amazon is doing in their latest move to expand both their reach and influence as they will be publishing 122 books this fall directly from the writers’ works. They’re publishing program has been available for some time but this is the first time that they are actually threatening to do something with it. To accelerate the move and bring credibility to the product, they hired veteran publisher Laurence Kirshbaum to run the program. Kirshbaum, 67. was CEO of Time Warner Book Group until 2005. He was hired earlier…

In the fast moving world of tech (and the faster moving world of social media) finding the happy medium between family and professional life can be a challenge. It is particularly challenging for women at times because of heightened familial expectations mixed with equal professional responsibilities with their male counterparts. As part of our ongoing Life Resources series, we took a long look at HybridMom. The website itself offers tons of material with advice, resources, tips, and experiences that women across the country can share and utilize. It’s not your standard women’s magazine…