By Paul Thomson :: 3:56 PM
The New York Times Company, parent of the same-named newspaper as well as the Boston Globe has announced today that it is seeking a buyer for its Boston paper.
The company is selling off its properties and turning its focus on the New York Times as its sole media outlet.
Evercore Group, an investment banking from New York City that has brokered similar journalism-world transactions has been retained to help seek a buyer.
This is not the first time that the NYT Company has tried to divest itself of the Globe. In 2009, NYT attempted to shutter the newspaper to control costs, but Globe management and employees offered wage-cuts and other concessions that enabled the Boston paper to trim costs.
The Boston Globe has been under NYT ownership ince 1993, when it was purchased for $1.1 billion. At the time, that price was a record in the newspaper industry. The Globe and its online presence, BostonGlobe.com and Boston.com were able to turn an operating profit in 2012.
By Paul Thomson :: 10:03 AM
So you dropped your iPhone (or any other small electric gadget) into the sink – or left it out on the deck overnight in a rainstorm, or the kids spilled their juice on it – you get the picture, it doesn’t turn on any longer. You may not be completely out of luck if you move quickly.
For a long time, the old wive’s tale has been to drop the afflicted gizmo into a ziploc storage bag full of rice. And if that’s all you have lying around, it might work okay, but rice isn’t the best tool for the job.
To really pull liquids out of all the nooks and crannies of an electronic device, you’ll need a desiccant. You know those little bags of “Do Not Eat” silica that show up in your new electronics boxes? Yup, that stuff.
The folks at iFixIt have come up with something called the Thirsty Bag (see picture above). This is an entire enclosure filled with desiccants that surrounds your soggy iPhone to pull all the liquid out of it quickly. The liquid absorption bag is specially designed to dry all the water out of your phone after it gets wet, protecting it from liquid damage. However, there’s a catch. You can’t wait until your phone is wet, and then go out and buy or order one of these things – you have to have it on hand, and put your phone in immediately after it takes a bath.
Using the bag will dry out your phone, but it is not guaranteed to fix it. Depending on the type of liquid your phone was exposed to, and what types of circuits were shorted out or grounded during the dunking, makes the difference in whether your phone will come out of this experience dead or alive.
[More information: Thirsty Bag]
By Cynthia Herbert :: 9:32 AM
Update: As of 11:45, HootSuite has reported that the problem has been addressed and the system is functioning normally again. Some users on Twitter are saying that they need to re-link their Twitter accounts for some search tools and streams to work within HootSuite.
HootSuite, the social media management system and website, appears to be down this morning for many across the web.
The service’s website is slow to respond, and its users are reporting that HootSuite mobile and desktop applications and dashboard are not refreshing data, or allowing them to post to their social media accounts.
Showing the global reach of HootSuite’s users, a Twitter search shows hundreds of recent Tweets about the service being down, many in languages other than English.
HootSuite has not yet offered a timetable for system restoration, but they acknowledged the issue when they made this post to their Facebook page around 9:20 this morning: “Hi all! We’re aware of an issue right now with the HootSuite Dashboard. We have escalated the issue and are investigating. Thanks for your patience as we look into this.”
At 9:40 am, HootSuite’s Twitter account dedicated to customer support and help posted the following Tweet:
Hello!Users may be experiencing issues accessing HootSuite. The Owls are hard at work resolving the issue. Thank you for your patience! ^SH
— HootSuite Helpers (@HootSuite_Help) February 20, 2013
By Gilbert Falso :: 9:23 AM
Search and web portal company Yahoo.com today unveiled a newly redesigned home page – the first overhaul the site’s front page has received in nearly four years.
It’s hard to believe, but Yahoo.com is still one of the most visited sites on the web, and its home page has been a dismal hodge-podge of links and content scraped from across the Internet for the past several years. New CEO Marissa Mayer hopes that today’s redesign will make all of that a distant memory.
The new front page was designed to offer a more intuitive and personal feel, where users can customize content based on their interests and preferences. It employs the endless scrolling feature – when you reach the bottom of the page, just keep scrolling for more news content.
Yahoo has added social networking integration into the new home page design when users login with a Yahoo or Facebook ID to retrieve articles and updates shared by friends and connections.
In addition to the desktop-based experience, Yahoo has also optimized the page to work well on mobile devices, both phones and tablets. And, changes to the site’s architecture and technology on the back-end have resulted in performance improvements – the site loads faster now.
The company will be rolling these changes out gradually over the next few days to users in the United States.
This home page redesign marks the third major visual and usability improvement that Mayer has introduced since becoming CEO of the company. In December, Mayer announced the redesign of Yahoo’s e-mail service and the photo-sharing site Flickr.
Below: Yahoo’s new home page will offer a better mobile experience
By Paul Thomson :: 6:20 PM
The newest handset from Taiwan’s HTC came to the marketplace today, the HTC One.
With hopes that this new handset will become the company’s flagship model, HTC launched it with great fanfare at events staged in New York and London.
Although it’s running the Android operating system, HTC has jazzed things up a bit with a new home screen feature, BlinkFeed. This screen will provide users with a stream of constantly updated information, including news, social feeds and entertainment content front and center. Icons for apps will be located in the background. The company announced that information will be available in this format from over than 1,400 media sources, including AOL, ESPN, MTV, and Reuters.
HTC has also improved its camera software, which now allows for the simultaneous capture of both high definition video and still images.
For music and sound, the phone features two forward-facing speakers with a dedicated amplifier that the company calls HTC BoomSound. Also included on the phone is karaoke functionality with lyrics fetched online from the Gracenote service.
By tapping into infrared technology, the HTC one can be turned into an interactive remote control for televisions.
Display-wise, it features a 4.7-inch full HD 1080p display with 468ppi resolution. The phone runs the Jelly Bean version of Android’s operating system, and has the capability of accessing fast 4G LTE networks. It will come in either silver or black, 32GB or 64GB versions. The battery cannot be removed.