By Gilbert Falso :: 12:09 AM
Last week, Adam Orth, who was, at the time, a creative director at Microsoft, caused quite a stir on the Internet and social media when he strongly advocated in favor of always-on gaming devices on Twitter. Orth made several Tweets about how he didn’t understand the problem many people had with Internet-connected gaming consoles, and appeared out of touch and insensitive to the gaming community. Some backstory here and here.
Microsoft had initially made an apology for Orth’s behavior, but did not comment further at the time. Now, according to sources who have told their stories to Polygon, Orth no longer works at Microsoft.
Reached for comment to confirm Orth’s firing, Microsoft simply stated that they will not comment about individual human resources actions. In a telling move, however, Orth’s Twitter bio, which had mentioned his job at Microsoft, is now blank.
Microsoft received a barrage of criticism following Orth’s Tweets – negative comments towards the company on Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit persisted non-stop for several days.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 4:06 PM
The United States Postal Service (USPS) has temporarily backed away from plans to halt Saturday mail delivery to residential addresses. In February, the USPS board had announced plans to halt letter delivery on Saturdays, but today announced that it had reversed course on that decision.
Although the USPS had laid out plans for reducing service down to five days, they never really had the power to do so. The regulations stipulating Saturday deliver are laid out in a Congressional mandate from the 1980’s, and Congress did not alter that mandate when it approved a funding measure last month to keep the government operating.
When the USPS made the decision to halt Saturday delivery, they had been hoping that Congress would agree and strip the mandate from the books. This was not the case. The USPS board released the following statement:
“Although disappointed with this Congressional action, the Board will follow the law and has directed the Postal Service to delay implementation of its new delivery schedule until legislation is passed that provides the Postal Service with the authority to implement a financially appropriate and responsible delivery schedule.”
The USPS had estimated that curtailing delivery on Saturdays would have saved the cash-strapped agency about $2 billion per year. Since another Congressional mandate, passed in 2006, required the USPS to pre-fund healthcare benefits for future retirees, the agency has been racking up debt by borrowing billions of dollars to make up for its budget shortfalls.
By Paul Thomson :: 10:59 AM
Online music streaming service Pandora has reached a milestone number this week – 200 million registered listeners.
The service, launched in 2005, reached its first 100 million users after six years, and then added the next 100 million in just under two years.
When Pandora was launched, the company “hoped to create a new way to discover and enjoy music that was completely personalized for each and every listener,” said Pandora founder Tim Westergren in a blog post. “We envisioned a time when artists of all kinds would thrive on radio, connecting with fans who loved exactly their kind of music.”
In addition to the uptick in the number of subscribers, the rate of song streaming has also increased. According to an infographic released by Pandora (see below), the service streams 200 million songs before 10:00 AM every day – averaging around 8,000 songs per second. Last month alone, users were streaming almost 1.5 billion hours of music, listening to more than 100,000 unique artists and 1 million unique songs.
Although Pandora was one of the first streaming music services to be widely embraced by users, it has not been without competition these past few years. Spotify and Rdio have been encroaching on Pandora’s user base lately, and have also been having an impact on how the company negotiates royalties and streaming agreements with the music labels. In February, Pandora made an unpopular announcement when it introduced a cap on mobile listening. Users of the free Pandora service are limited to 40 hours of music every month.
Below, infographic provided by Pandora.
Paul Thomson :: 9:08 PM
Get ready, gamers – Microsoft has announced the day of the next generation Xbox console debut – Tuesday, May 21.
Although it won’t ship until sometime in November, Microsoft will reveal the new hardware next month, as well as finally tell the truth behind all of the rumors about it requiring an always-on Internet connection.
Giving additional credibility to those rumors are the tips that sources are passing along about two different price points for the new Xbox, which will just be called Xbox, and not Xbox 720. Many close to Microsoft are claiming that the console will cost around $500, but a lower price point (between $300 and $350) would be available with some type of subscription. No additional detail on what type of subscription, but you can bet that however it is managed, this may be the way they ensure always-on connections to the gaming hardware.
Microsoft has been under some pretty close scrutiny lately for the always-on Internet requirements. Last week, one of its employees, Adam Orth, was publicly ridiculed on Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit, after he defended the merits of an always-connected gaming platform.
By Gilbert Falso :: 6:36 PM
What started as a rumor last last week and extended over the weekend has finally been confirmed today – yes, Austin, Texas is the next city on the list to get Google’s superfast Fiber Internet service.
The service will start to roll out to neighborhoods in 2014. Google has set up a website and a form for interested users to sign up so that the company can determine its schedule for rolling out the service, and what areas of the city would be good candidates for the initial fiber service installations.
Google selected Austin because the city, “is known globally as a mecca for creative and entrepreneurial people, including musicians, artists, tech companies, and the University of Texas and its new medical research hospital to name a few,” Google said in a press release. “High-speed ubiquitous connectivity can make an immediate impact on the work of all of these groups.”
David Burrows, Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Cinsay, an Austin company that offers a bandwidth-intense platform that merges video and ecommerce along with distribution via social media, is excited for the introduction of Google Fiber to the city. He believes that the availability of Fiber will help “brand Austin ahead of many tech competitors around the country in terms of how Google views the city as a technology developer and leader.”
“Google’s entrance into the Austin market is a classic ‘build it and they will come'” scenario, Burrows believes. With access to superfast Internet, Austin will be more appealing to established tech companies and startups alike.
Although a big name in the market, Google is not the first to bring fiber connections to the city.
“We already have at least two sources of fiber to the home, at least close in to the city,” explained James Krewson, the founder of the FindersCheapers.com price comparison website. Portions of Austin are already served by Grande Communications and AT&T U-Verse.
“The question is,” says Krewson, “how much bigger is the draw of Google’s 1000 Mbps service versus, say, AT&T’s 24Mbps. For my small web company, its a pretty big plus.”