Mike Dell’s former lieutenant leads coup attempt
Dave Johnson finds himself once again pitted against a former employer. In leading Blackstone Group’s 11th-hour bid for Dell Inc, the acquisitions expert and famously tough negotiator has seated himself across the table from ex-boss and company founder Michael Dell. Their relationship has now become a crucial element in the battle over the largest private [...]
Google picks 8,000 winners of ‘Glass’ contest
Google has picked out 8,000 people who will be given a chance to don a pair of Internet-connected glasses and make a fashion statement likely to be envied by gadget-loving geeks around the world. The pool selected by Google won a contest conducted last month requiring U.S. residents to submit 50-word applications through Twitter or [...]
Black, female, and a Silicon Valley ‘trade secret’
How diverse is Silicon Valley? Most tech companies really, really don’t want you to know, and the U.S. government isn’t helping shed any light on the issue. In an investigation that began in August 2011, Money Magazine probed 20 of the most influential U.S. technology companies, the Department of Labor, and the Equal Employment Opportunity [...]
5 things we learned at SXSW 2013
Hoopla surrounding South by Southwest Interactive, the techie festival that wrapped up here Tuesday, has exploded in recent years. The event is famously known for helping to boost Twitter in 2007 and Foursquare three years later, giving it a rep as a launching pad for new digital tools. Fresh-faced startups converge on Austin, hoping to [...]
Austin startup smashing mobile barriers
Omar Naseef, a native Austinite and UT grad, is on a mission. By launching YoMobi, he and partner Katherine Ruiz are poised to shatter barriers and make mobile commerce accessible to all entrepreneurs and small businesses. He identified an inequity: that nonprofits and micro-businesses who couldn’t afford to hire their own IT staff or site [...]
Michael Dell bets on a private turnaround
Michael Dell once gave up day-to-day control of the computer company that bears his name – an experiment that went poorly and ended relatively quickly. But now he is putting up some of his own wealth to reverse the company’s fortunes. Dell Inc will go private in a $24.4 billion deal led by Michael [...]
First leaked picture of the Samsung Galaxy S IV emerges
An image alleged to be of Samsung’s (005930) upcoming Galaxy S IV smartphone was published on Friday by SamMobile. If authentic, the image reveals that Samsung will finally ditch its traditional home and navigational buttons for on-screen keys. The bezel around the device is thinner, giving the upcoming Galaxy smartphone a near edge-to-edge display, similar [...]
Microsoft opens its own social network
After a long period of closed beta testing, Microsoft made the beta version of its social network, Socl, available to everyone on Tuesday. Socl initially launched this May. It’s a search-meets-social networking website that looks more like Pinterest than Facebook, and has until now been open only to invited Microsoft employees and college students. Now, [...]
Is the iPad Mini Worth Buying?
Apple has unveiled a new member of the family: the iPad Mini. This device is a clear response to the market pressure the cheaper Amazon Kindle Fire HD and the Nexus 7 have placed on the existing iPad. So how does this scaled down version of the iPad compare with its newly refreshed big brother [...]
New iPhone nears as holiday lineups unveiled
After weeks of speculation, anticipation and a dose of hype, Apple is widely expected to announce a new smartphone at an event in San Francisco on Wednesday. Apple isn’t saying anything about the topic of the event, but the email invitation it sent to reporters contains a shadow in the shape of a “5” — [...]
