Author: Sal McCloskey

Google announced they intended to purchase Motorola Mobility last August. Nine months, a go-around with China, and $12.5 billion dollars later, the deal has been completed according to a post by CEO Larry Page. “It’s a well known fact that people tend to overestimate the impact technology will have in the short term, but underestimate its significance in the longer term,” Page said. “Many users coming online today may never use a desktop machine, and the impact of that transition will be profound–as will the ability to just tap and pay with your phone.” Along with the handset giant, Google…

The best that could have happened in tech blogging would have been for Facebook’s IPO to “pop”. We still would have watched closely but there would have been no need to analyze it in-depth. As any good doctor after a successful operation, we would have clapped our hands and monitored. Instead, we’re stuck trying to break down exactly what happened on Friday and more importantly what will happen in the coming weeks. In short, Facebook ruined a lot of tech and business bloggers’ weekends. Here is a video of analysis that will help to determine if this was simply Facebook and its bankers pricing the IPO…

Stocks shot up 18% after a report that Groupon had slayed expectations from The Street to post its first quarterly profit. Better decisions on marketing spends and an increase in customers and merchants were the trigger point that marked the first real turn after a disastrous start. The company has been plagued by accounting issues and bad press surrounding their inexperienced CEO Andrew Mason. Now, then “humbled” Mason is making sound decisions, pushing for mobile expansion as well as growth overseas. “Revenue growth was impressive and they also had material margin expansion,” said The…

Don’t be fooled by reports that Google and Twitter have become “ensnared” in the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation of Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram. Both the search giant and microblogging platform are exactly where they want to be. This is the best news for both Google and Twitter with some suggesting that they may have both had their hands in prompting the investigation in the first place. The deal puts the most powerful social network in the world in prime position by having the most used mobile photo-sharing company in the world at its disposal. That’s bad because…

HP has not had much luck in their early attempts at penetrating the tablet market after launching and subsequently canning their WebOS TouchPad in less than 2 months. They’re hoping that luck will change and they are officially making Windows 8 their operating system of choice after rumors surrounding the partnership were leaked last month. It will be comparable to the iPad but with minor improvements such as a thinner body and longer battery life to try to succeed where Android tablets have failed: cracking the full-size tablet market that Apple completely dominates. Rumors of a smaller iPad…

The biggest IPO in tech history is appearing to be smaller than people thought according to a recent report from Bloomberg. With growth prospects for their advertising model raising warning flags, the company has been strict with their policy of not allowing revenue to get in the way of user experience. To the all-important long-term investors, this is terrifying. To the fast-moving investors who see Facebook as an opportunity to ride the initial wave of enthusiasm, it isn’t much better news. There is little doubt that the stocks will start at one price and shoot up in the short term. There is growing…

The math is pretty straight forward. It was likely the most widely-downloaded camcorder recording of a movie ever. Following the thinking of the MPAA, this dramatically hurts the profits of ailing Hollywood studios because illegal downloads are the worst thing that has come out of the digital age. It stands to reason that they should spend millions on lobbying Washington for strict measures to end piracy and save Hollywood. The virally-popular pirated version of The Avengers (which came out a week before it’s US release) is the reason that the film flopped. Except it didn’t. It has already been…

The Social Network portrayed jilted Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin as a victim. His character portrayed by The Amazing Spiderman’s Andrew Garfield was trying his best to implement profitable strategies at the startup while Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg and Justin Timberlake’s Sean Parker partied their way to not-so-accidental success. Now, with 2% of the company heading into an IPO that could be valued near $100 million, Saverin is about to have enough money to maintain his partying ways in Singapore. While Zuckerberg is often spotted walking his dog or driving his Acura, Saverin…

The dorm rooms that are often the most visited by friends are the ones with a fridge, a Playstation, and a Bose stereo. The gadgets and features of the “lucky” kids in the high-dollar dorms are great but they have nothing on BRAD. Take a few hundred dollars worth of equipment, a good amount of time putting it together, lots of skill and a ton of creativity and you have what Berkeley Engineering freshman Derek Low put together in unit 2, Griffith’s Hall room 402. The innovative approach to automation may have a short life, however. Despite keeping in line with housing standards of using tape rather than…

There was a time not too long ago when technology bloggers and pundits (myself included) believed that email was going away. We thought that the system would be replaced by Facebook messaging, IM, social networking, and other variations of online communication that were more elegant and less abused than email. We were wrong. I was wrong. We failed to see one major flaw in our judgment. Despite so many people being on Facebook and other forms of communication, everyone has an email address. Even with the necessity of many to check their other forms of communication regularly, almost obsessively,…