Nicholas Kolakowski

Microsoft‘s devastating financial results for last quarter were due to a number of factors, including a flagging economy, lowered sales in traditional PCs and a rise in mininotebooks, known popularly as “netbooks,” which can only be loaded with lower-margin Microsoft products. During a July 23 earnings call, Microsoft reported a 17 percent decline in year-over-year […]

Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos tendered an apology on his site for last week’s deletion of two George Orwell e-books from users’ Kindle devices. Around July 16, Kindle users realized that copies of “Animal Farm” and “1984” had disappeared from their e-readers’ archived items library. Around the same time, an e-mail from Amazon.com refunding the purchase […]

Bill Gates advised India to expand its IT horizons and concentrate more on high-end research and development, as opposed to its current focus on technology manufacturing. “At first some of that [IT boom] was built on low-cost labor,” Gates said during his visit to New Delhi, according to Reuters. “It’s not a sustainable thing because […]

Apple released new versions of Logic Studio and Final Cut Studio on July 23, emphasizing the company’s focus on film editing and audio design tools during a week in which it also demonstrated robust sales across the larger IT market. The updated version of Logic Studio, an application set including Logic Pro and MainStage that […]

An upcoming e-reader from Plastic Logic, aimed at the small and midsize business and enterprise markets, will utilize AT&T’s 3G network to wirelessly download material onto the mobile device. The July 22 announcement followed on the heels of news that Barnes & Noble would manage Plastic Logic’s electronic bookstore. In adopting wireless connectivity, the Plastic […]

Microsoft took a hit to it earnings during its fourth financial quarter of 2009, reporting a 17 percent decline in year-over-year revenue. Overall, Microsoft earned $13.10 billion for the quarter, coming in more than $1 billion below Wall Street estimates. Although Microsoft hit several technical milestones during the quarter, including the rollout of the Windows […]

Apple previously investigated Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer of its iPhones and iPods, three years before the July 16 death of a 25-year-old Foxconn employee raised questions about Foxconn management. Sun Danyong, an engineer with Foxconn, had been put in charge of shipping 16 prototypes of the fourth-generation iPhone to Apple in the United States. However, […]

Despite rumors of a mini-notebook in development, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook took some time during the company’s July 21 earnings call to disparage the devices – although he also refused to comment on whether Apple was developing a tablet computer that would serve a similar function. At issue was the computing power built […]

Microsoft will shut down Soapbox, its online-video competitor to YouTube, by the end of August. The decision follows weeks of publicly acknowledged debate over whether to continue operating the portal, which delivered Microsoft a paltry share of the online video market. According to a Microsoft statement July 21, users will be cease to be able […]

Microsoft announced the release of both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 to manufacturing on July 22. The two platforms represent a major part of Microsoft’s grand strategy, as it seeks to capitalize on technological trends such as virtualization that are rapidly changing the face of IT. They also present a substantial chance for […]

Popfly, Microsoft‘s 2-year-old development tool for creating applications, mashups and Web pages, will shut down in mid-August. Originally intended to provide programming tools for those with little to no programming experience, Popfly let users snap together code “blocks” to create applications and Web sites. Elements such as video, pictures and news feeds could be combined […]

Apple saw robust revenue and profits for the quarter ended June 27 and a massive jump in iPhone sales, even as sales of its signature product, the iPod, declined by 7 percent from a year ago. During a July 21 earnings call, Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer referred to the previous ten weeks as […]