Ladies and Gentlemen, the Presidents of the United States

On Tuesday, Barack Obama will make history when he’s sworn in as the forty-fourth president of the United States of America. Let’s pause to reflect on how how we got here: Here are the president-elect and his forty-three predecessors (counting Grover Cleveland as two presidents, of course). Click on any or all of ‘em, and you’ll go to relevant sites around the Web. (I tried to be nonpartisan; many of them are the appropriate presidential libraries.)

And if you’re less interested in presidencies past and more interested in the one that’s about to start, check out my friend and former colleague Mark Sullivan’s guide to following the inauguration on the Web over at PCWorld.com.

Circuit City Under Siege

They’re the grim reapers of failing retail chains, except they brandish going-out-of-business signs instead of scythes. And they were surrounding the Circuit City a couple of miles from my house today, which, like the rest of the company’s 500+ U.S. stores, is liqidating its stock as the company goes out of business. When I drove up to the store, I was startled to find a long line of customers waiting to get in, snaking all the way to the Sports Authority next door–maybe the longest such line I’ve ever seen that wasn’t at a store with a fresh batch of iPhones or Wiis. (I sure never saw lines like it when CompUSA, Good Guys, and other defunct chains held their liquidation sales–but perhaps today’s economic climate is leaving shoppers obsessed with finding bargains.)

I joined the line, and got the impression that other folks had joined it in part because they saw a line and figured it was worth joining. (Or at least the woman behind me seemed unclear on the concept–she asked what was going on in the store, and why were were all queuing up.)

A CNet reporter said he found “pandemonium” inside a Southern California Circuit City; this one, just to the south of San Francisco, was relatively sedate inside. Actually, there were fewer people in line to buy stuff than I usually see at Best Buy on a Saturday afternoon. The store felt downright lonely, in part because it was full of staffers who knew they were about to be unemployed, tables of open-box merchandise, items scattered in the aisles, and TVs forlornly playing a video loop arguing that you should buy a TV from Circuit City because of its great post-purchase service.

It was easy to tell why so few people were filling their carts with gear: The deals to be had were far from spectacular. The signs outside promised “Up to 30% OFF,” but a more direct claim would have been something along the lines of “Most hardware 10 percent off, software 20 percent off, and good luck if you find anything in the store that’s 30 percent off.” If your goal was to get the best possible price, you could probably beat even Circuit City’s liquidation prices without trying very hard by going online. Which is presumably one reason why Circuit City was forced into bankruptcy in the first place.

If Circuit City’s liquidation follows the usual pattern, the discounts will get larger as the shelves grow barer, and within a few weeks the stores will be left with items that you don’t want to buy even at 80 percent off. After the jump, some bad iPhone photos from my visit, which left me melancholy about the death of the 60-year-old merchant even though I was never a big fan in the first place.

Continue reading this story…

Belkin Responds to Fake User Review Charges

Belkin president Mark Reynoso has issued a statement in response to the discovery yesterday that one of its employees was paying people sixty-five cents to post fraudelent favorable user reviews on Amazon.com, Buy.com, and Newegg. The gist of the statement: Belkin didn’t know it was happening, it’s sorry it happened, it’s undoing the damage, and it won’t happen again. It’s appropriately humble, but you’d hope that Belkin is doing one more thing, whether it chooses to disclose so or not: Terminating the staffer who came up with this brilliant idea. I think most every consumer would agree that you don’t want other employees at other companies thinking it’s possible to play these sorts of games and get away with it…

tRIPod: Lycos (Europe) Shuts Down a Pioneering Web Service

[UPDATE: TechCrunch has updated the post I link to below to clarify that it's Lycos Europe, a separate company, that's shutting down Tripod. Lycos and Tripod in the U.S. are separate entities and presumably not affected--but I'm still feeling nostalgic...]

Most of the scads of Web services that are dying lately have met their end at an early age, and usually before they’d accomplished much of anything. But over at TechCrunch, Michael Arrington has reported that Lycos is shutting down its Tripod site-publishing service (as well as Lycos Mail). That’s like hearing that a celebrity from way back when–one who you weren’t ever sure was still with us–is dying in poverty.

Back in the mid 1990s, Tripod and its archrival, GeoCities, were extremely easy, extremely popular ways to put together extremely basic Web sites for free. (Both paid your way by putting ads on your site.) Here’s what Tripod looked like in 1996, courtesy of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine:

During the original Web acquisition frenzy, Tripod was bought by Lycos and GeoCities was bought by Yahoo…and over the years, bot were rendered largely superfluous by blogs, social networks, services like Yahoo Groups, and other methods of getting on the Web without a lot of work. I guess that the fact that Tripod is still extant means that there are folks who still find it useful–and those people will apparently have to find new homes for their homepages.

I was never a Tripod user and hadn’t given it a millisecond of thought in eons, but it’s still kind of sad to see it go. Another Web page builder from back in the day, AOL’s Hometown, died a few months ago. GeoCities lives on, though. And I’m not sure what’s happening to Tripod’s longtime sister service Angelfire, which I was even more startled to find was still in business.

Is Belkin Paying For Fake Favorable User Reviews?

This is still a story in progress, but it looks just horrible: The Daily Background is reporting that a Belkin employee has been using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk piecework service to pay people to post fake positive reviews of Belkin products on Amazon, Newegg, and Buy.com for the princely sum of sixty-five cents per review. (From appearances, the gent behind the scheme isn’t too bright, since anyone who rummaged around in Mechanical Turk could uncover his plotting.) Belkin hasn’t yet responded; maybe there’s more here than meets the eye, and it’s certainly possible that the Belkin staffer in question is a renegade who’s violating corporate policy.

Assuming that the situation is as it appears to be, you gotta hope that Belkin will go to extraordinary means to make clear that what’s going on is profoundly unacceptable. And that it’s humiliated to such a degree that other companies that do this or contemplate doing this–and there are surely more than a few–get scared enough that they steer clear of lying to their customers in order to drum up business.

Ballmer Met With Yahoo Exec This Week

So Steve, tell us again that you aren’t interested in Yahoo (although lately yes you have been singing a different tune)? Microsoft’s chief executive has reportedly met with Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock, according to a report in the New York Times. This would be the second contact by Ballmer to Yahoo’s higher-ups: he also apparently had an informal conversation with incoming CEO Carol Bartz also this week.

This seems to confirm the reporting from Tuesday which indicated that Microsoft has proposals ready to present to the Yahoo board any time now. The speed at which this seems to be happening also leads me to believe Yahoo is truly attempting to have something ready to go by the time it announces its earnings less than two weeks from now.

What exactly has been said nobody knows, but it probably involves the two companies merging their search assets. Bartz is apparently a little reluctant to give up complete control of the search business, so whatever happens Yahoo will likely still have a hand in the final product.

The New York Times on Boxee

I thought I was being weird and bleeding-edge by attempting to dump cable TV for watching sites like Hulu through Boxee’s open-source media center software on an Apple TV. But the New York Times has a nifty story today on Boxee and its fans–and once something’s in the Times, it’s presumably well on its way to going mainstream.The Times says that the Boxee-on-Apple TV software has been downloaded 100,000 times to date, which suggests that I have a lot of company already.

I’ll be writing more about my experiences soon, but my overarching takeaway at the moment is that Internet TV on a TV is, above all, different from cable–better in some respects, and worse than others. Of course, Internet TV is still busy being born–Hulu is less than a year old, and Boxee is still in alpha. Cable TV has a head start of a few decades. But if there’s one thing that undeniable about the Internet, it’s that it can catch up with old ways of doing things really quickly. And then go far beyond them…

Tech Layoffs Are Picking Up Speed

Folks, I have to say the rate at which these layoffs are coming lately is beginning to seriously worry me a little. While we focus here on technology, forgive me a moment while I stray a bit. Across the economy layoffs — as pointed out by this CNBC article — have increased dramatically after the New Year.

The reasoning? After a holiday season that was more about denial of our economic situation rather than facing reality, companies are looking at their balance sheets and realizing what bad shape the US economy is in.  So the first reaction is to cut costs, and that nearly always means layoffs.

You have probably already read David’s reporting on AMD’s latest round of cuts, and Harry’s take on the end of Circuit City. But it goes beyond this.

Motorola? They’ll be cutting another 4,000 jobs due to weak handset sales. Autodesk’s balance sheet is deteriorating, so it has decided to cut its workforce by 10 percent, which leaves about 750 without a job.

Seagate is set to lay off 2,950, which would be 6 percent of its workforce. Worse yet, some employees will see their salaries cut by as much as a quarter. Oracle and Lexmark are both cutting 250 apiece, and I’m sure we’ve only just begun. Sad to think we’re only 15 days into 2009, and its already this bad.

What’s more worrisome is that when stuff like this happens, spending on advertising also drops. Take for example Federated Media, Technologizer’s ad partner. The company announced that it’s laying off staffers who were focused on traditional display advertising in order to focus on more “conversational” social-media marketing initiatives. The weak market for display ads inevitably means less ads on at least some of the tech sites that are dependent on them for revenue.

What does that mean for those publications? Obviously, they’ll start letting go of writers. It’s just like dominoes.

This recession is by no means over: we aren’t even to the worst part yet. President-elect Obama is going to inherit one hell of a mess, that’s for sure.

AMD Cuts Employees, Compensation

Deflation is rearing its head in the chip-making business. Advanced Micro Devices intends to reduce its workforce by nearly 9 percent and will reduce employee compensation during its first quarter.

Even its top executives are taking a hit to their base salaries (no word about their bonuses); the rank and file will see their incomes drop on a staggered basis depending on their employment status. Other perks, including the company’s 401(k) matching program are being suspended indefinitely.

AMD must take difficult and prudent steps to reduce its cost in response to the worldwide economic downturn, it explained in a statement to the press.

This should come as no surprise considering there has been a corresponding downturn in the sales of semiconductors. Chip sales dipped to $20.8 billion in 2008 from $23.1 billion in 2007, according to a recent report by the Semiconductor Industry Association. Public companies like AMD are going to respond to reduced demand by cutting expenses, because they have to act in the interest of shareholders.

The company is not selling the copper plumbing–yet. While its sales have dipped, it still remains second largest semiconductor producer in the world next to Intel, and it has laid out long term road maps for future technologies. Further, new chips designed for low-cost computers, such as its Neo processor, could entice spendthrift consumers to open up their wallets.

Should PC buyers worry about AMD’s prospects or even shy away from buying machines that use its chip? Not really. Companies  that big don’t just close up shop overnight, and AMD is also highly unlikely to skimp on its manufacturing processes or R&D, lest it risk damaging its brand or ceding even more market share to Intel. Customers can buy AMD-based systems with confidence.

Life Without Comcast: An Experiment in Internet TV

Maybe the title of this new Technologizer series is unfair. I don’t despise Comcast, the company who I’ve been paying for cable TV service for the past six months. (Until then, at my old pad, I was a DirecTV man.) But I don’t love it, either–especially the part about paying it a large amount of money each month when I watch maybe .000001% of what it offers.

And oh, did I mention the remote control that came with my Comcast high-def box? Worst piece of technology I use regularly–every time I pick it up, my blood begins to boil a little.

Continue reading this story…

YouTube Comes to PlayStation 3, Wii

Here’s a statistic that’s bandied about by game industry cheerleaders: roughly 40 percent of U.S. homes own a video game console.

It’s also a figure that will likely be loathed by cable providers if more streaming video Web sites follow YouTube’s lead. Yesterday, Google’s video juggernaut launched a sleek interface for the PlayStation 3 and Wii. It was as good a reason as any to dust off Nintendo’s waggle box, so I checked it out. The service is basically what you would expect and hope for–a browsing and viewing experience that’s tailored to the size of your television screen. A similar channel is already available for TiVo owners.

Of course, YouTube is best for short bursts of random entertainment, and it only makes me yearn for support of a full-featured TV Web site, like Hulu or TV.com. See, I recently gave up cable to find out how much content I could replace with the Internet (and I’m not alone). As a cost-cutting measure, it’s great, but running an RGB cable between my computer and laptop isn’t ideal when I just want to lounge on the couch.

Solutions are on the way, like media streamers and possibly HDTVs that can support Hulu, but that requires an extra purchase. If you’re among the 40 percent that already has a gaming console, chances are you’d want it to be the hub for streaming Internet television instead of something extra. There is a utility called PlayOn that lets you watch Hulu and other sites on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, but it requires a computer as the middleman. This can get clumsy if your wireless Internet is on the spotty side.

There’s been some hinting at integration with streaming TV Web sites, at least for the Xbox 360. Here’s hoping it actually happens.

Sprint to Undercut Itself With $50 Boost Unlimited Plan

I don’t know but this seems just a bit odd to me. Sprint Nextel owned prepay company Boost Mobile is set to offer a $50 monthly plan which would give its users unlimited voice, text, data, and “chirp” (walkie-talkie for us less hip) beginning on January 22.

Unlike other prepay companies, who offer unlimited plans on a regional basis, Boost’s will be nationwide wherever the company offers service. Indeed, its promotional material highlights this important distinction.

There’s kind of a problem here though. Sprint has its own unlimited plan, which costs $99 per month. That gives the user unlimited data, text, and voice calling, but no walkie-talkie. So really, Sprint’s just taken the unusual step of competing with itself for whatever reason — and we all know they’re not exactly raking in the profits right now.

Indeed, the company is marketing as a way to directly compete with the bigger cellular companies, where offering these unlimited plans has become the in vogue thing to do. It also markets it as a way to get away from all the fees that our celluar providers are so fond of charging.

While I am thrilled to see Boost offering what is a really exceptional deal, I’m a little confused as to why they’d undercut themselves so much. I do have an hunch however that this might just be followed by an announcement by Sprint that they’re lowering the price of their unlimited plans as well.

Let the price wars begin. God knows we all need to save some money in this economy…

Circuit City Closes Up Shop Once and For All

It’s hardly surprising, but now it’s official: Troubled consumer-electronics merchant Circuit City has failed to find a buyer and will therefore be liquidating all its stores. It’s lousy news for its more than 30,000 employees, its stockholders, and anyone who was a fan of the chain, which started with a single store six decades ago.

Even if the U.S. economy was in better shape, the odds were against the company–and, for that matter, anyone else who tries to operate a big chain of electronics stores. Far more of them have folded over the years than have ever been viable businesses. Running successful retail stores is by definition really hard, and the intense price competition among gadget sellers makes squeezing out a profit incredibly tough.

Even so, Circuit City’s death strikes me as largely self-inflicted: For too long, its stores were joyless places with limited selections, uncompetitive prices, and mediocre customer service. It even had an organized program to fire staffers who were experienced enough to know what they were doing and replace them with clueless, low-clost newbies.

With Circuit City’s imminent disappearance, the country is really left with only one nationwide full-service electronics chain, Best Buy. It’s long played Gallant to Circuit City’s Goofus, and should ride out the recession in decent shape. Other electronics purveyors are specialists (RadioShack), generalists with an electronics department (Wal-Mart, Target), regional (Fry’s, the current incarnation of CompUSA), or willfully limited in number of locations (Micro Center). Or, of course, completely virtual (Amazon.com, Buy.com, etc., etc., etc.).

Among the reasons I wish that Circuit City had made it is this: It would be a lot better for consumers if there were at least two strong national chains competing to win customers through broad product selection, low prices, and decent service. Best Buy has enough competition and challenges on other fronts that I don’t expect it to grow too fat and happy, but it no longer has to worry about its most direct rival.

Of course, if Best Buy’s management is smart–and it is–it’ll continue to run scared. Jim Collins’ business bestseller, Good to Great–published in 2001–lavishes praise on Circuit City as one of the country’s best-run companies of any sort. It took Circuit City only eight years to go from glory to death. Bottom line: Best Buy could be dead in a decade too, if it doesn’t make its customers happy…

Legislation Introduced to Push Back DTV Transition

Obama’s transition team has asked for it. FCC chairman Kevin Martin has spoke out publicly against it. Now, West Virginia Democratic Sen. John Rockefeller is attempting to get Congress to act on the digital TV deadline. Saying more time is needed, Rockefeller on Thursday introduced legislation to push back the date until June 12. It really isn’t clear if it will pass — telecoms such as AT&T and Verizon who have purchased the soon-to-be-vacated spectrum are opposed to any change. However,  there is some momentum in Congress to give people more time in light of the problems with the set-top box coupon program, it appears.

MySpace Developing Free E-Mail Service

Rumors are swirling about social networking giant MySpace’s next possible move: a free e-mail service for its users. TechCrunch reported Thursday that sources told it the company has such a service in development, and at its launch it would already be the third largest e-mail provider without having to lift a finger.

Essentially, your MySpace ID would become your email@myspace.com. It’s not far-fetched to expect MySpace to integrate the e-mail functionality right in to the current messaging product, although I’d venture to guess they’d have to rejigger it a bit to make it work for non MySpace messages a bit better.

Is this smart for the social networking giant? You bet your bottom it is. MySpace is already trying hard to keep users on its pages longer, and nothing would do that more than e-mail. People check their e-mail several times a day — some several times an hour – and each time there is the opportunity to sell another ad impression.

MySpace is neither confirming nor denying the reports.

A Very, Very, Very Early Look at Office 14

We still don’t know much about Microsoft Office 14 except that Microsoft has begun to give an early version to developers and that it will involve simple Web-based versions of its core apps. But Neowin has what seem to be leaked screen shots that give a sneak peek at the suite’s look and feel as it stands right now. Don’t expect to figure out much from them, though–there are some minor changes to the icons, but nothing that reveals any earthshaking changes, if such changes are indeed in there somewhere. We may need to wait until Microsoft has its say before we get much of a picture of what to expect–and when to expect it…