Dell indicated that it would take Carl Icahn's bid for the company seriously when it struck a deal with the billionaire investor earlier this week, and it may have more reason to do so now — multiple sources are reporting that Blackstone has now abandoned its rival offer. According to the Financial Times, Blackstone's investors weren't convinced of the deal's merits, and felt that Dell's value on the stock market is already fair...
Leap Motion, the company making extremely accurate gesture detection hardware, has signed a deal to bundle and then integrate its motion-based controller into select HP products. This is a big win for Leap, which already has a deal with ASUS that will bundle the Leap Motion device in with its all in one computers as well as select ASUS notebooks this year.
Bundling is good, but integration is always better in the consumer world, since most consumers may not have any idea that they want gesture-based controls or even why. Leap’s system works like a Kinect with an exterior piece of hardware attached to the computer that detects hand motions with a high degree of accuracy — within 1/100th of a millimeter. As for why someone might want this on their machine, it’s an enabler for new types of computing experiences.
Adobe Photoshop CS6 is the industry-standard image editing software. It's a verb. For some projects — say, making unbelievable hi-res versions of scenes from Metroid — there's no substitute. But like most professional software, it's crazy expensive.
If you're a bona fide student, you can pick up a student version of Photoshop CS6 for $320. But for the rest of us, if you want a legal copy, you're looking at software that could very well cost more than your laptop. It makes sense to buy CS6 on sale. Right now, Officemax has a 20% off code that — surprise! — even works on expensive software, including Photoshop CS6. The code SAVE20 knocks the price of a retail copy down to $560, which is a historically notable price. Pick it up, and get shoopin'.
The CIA is on the verge of signing a cloud computing contract with Amazon, worth up to $600 million over 10 years, reports Frank Konkel at Federal Computer Week.
If the details about this deal are true, it could be a game-changer for the enterprise cloud market.
That's because Amazon Web Services will help the CIA build a "private cloud" filled with technologies like big data, reports Konkel, citing unnamed sources.
The CIA is pretty closed-lipped about its business, as spies are apt to be. This is no exception. It won't confirm the deal or comment on it, so details are sketchy. But the contract is expected to be for a "private" cloud, which is not what AWS is known for.
Need a place to squirrel away your digital stash? Box is giving 50GB of online storage free to new users.
Box will let you sync across both Mac and PC, and it has apps for Android, iOS, Outlook, BlackBerry PlayBook, and a bunch of other platforms listed here. To get yours, just head over to Box here, sign up for an account, and enjoy.
Michael Dell, the founder of the computing and technology company that bears his name, confirmed today that he intended to buy it back from shareholders. In a deal announced this morning, Dell and Silver Lake Partners will buy out the company’s existing shareholders in a transaction worth $24.4 billion.
The deal values Dell at $13.65 a share, amounting to a 25.5 percent premium over the closing price of $10.88, where Dell was trading on Jan. 11 before the first reports of renewed interest in a buyout transaction emerged.
The deal also brings together private equity fund Silver Lake with software giant Microsoft, and represents the latest step in a relationship that began when Microsoft bought out Skype for $8.5 billion in 2011.
During Google's earnings call today, Google executives made it clear that the acquisition of Motorola comes with quite a bit of baggage. More specifically, Google has "inherited a 12-18 month product pipeline" that Google CFO Patrick Pichette says the company is "still working through." Yikes.
The deal, which closed last May for $12.5 billion hasn't amounted to much eight months later. With 12 to 18 months of existing products in the works, we may not see a more Google-y Android phone from Motorola till the summer or beyond. Or maybe we'll see one at I/O this May. More likely, though, is an October or November timeframe for a possible Motorola-built Nexus device.
Make no mistake; the timing of the fiscal cliff was no accident. The confluence of spending cuts and tax increases scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2013 was by design, carefully planned in an effort to force the government to address its rampant spending and borrowing.
Believe it or not, our government’s ability to borrow does have limits. When we last maxed out the ol’ credit card in August 2011, it caused a bit of a scramble, and Congress dealt with the problem as only this current Congress would: by increasing the limit and instructing a bipartisan super-committee to find a way to trim our deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next decade to reduce our reliance on borrowing. In the event the super-committee could not reach a resolution by November 2011, required spending cuts would take effect on January 1, 2013 to protect us from ourselves. The super-committee failed, resulting in the panicked debate that consumed Congress and dominated headlines for the past six weeks.
Sprint followed through on its bid to buy the remaining portion of Clearwire that it doesn’t own, and will spend $2.2 billion or $2.97 per share to complete the deal, the operator announced Monday. The deal by Sprint, which already owned 51.7 percent of Clearwire, values the 4G provider at about $10 billion, including net debt and spectrum lease obligations of $5.5 billion.
Sprint’s bid offers a 128 percent premium over Clearwire’s closing share price right before Sprint confirmed it was talking to Softbank about an investment on October 11. And it’s slightly more than the $2.90 a share Sprint offered last week, according to a regulatory filing. Softbank’s decision to invest $20.1 billion to buy a 70 percent stake in Sprint provided Sprint with $8 billion in cash, making the deal possible.
We all remember when Facebook bought Instagram for a cool billion dollars, seemingly out of nowhere. Well now another piece of the story might be coming out. According to a report from The New York Times, Twitter made an offer too, for $525 million.
The Times report cites unnamed sources who say Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom agreed to a verbal offer of $525 million in March before changing his tune and deciding to stay independent. Then, of course, the Facebook acquisition happened, and according to the Time's sources, Twitter was shocked; they'd been ready to make a counter-offer for more but the opportunity never arose.
The issue here, aside from Facebook vs. Twitter loyalty, is that Systrom later stated to the California Corporations Department—which was aiming to find out if the sale was made with investors' best interests in mind—that Instagram had never received any other formal offers. He was under oath at the time.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. – Winston Churchill
Dealing with criticism is one of the most important skills you have to develop to be successful in writing – and in life.
I used to get really hurt and instantly defend myself if I received any type of hateful email. And in the beginning of my podcasting days, these weren’t uncommon.
I remember being crushed every single time I read one. I had put so much thought, heart and research into what I was doing, and yet here I was enraging people.
Looking back now I feel those people had a point, even though they could have conveyed their messages a little more nicely. I’ve found it’s better, both personally and career-wise, to take criticism in before dismissing it or feeling sorry for yourself.
I wish it hadn’t taken me years to learn, but I finally developed a few ways of turning criticism – even really harsh criticism – to your advantage.
Online shopping saves you time and gives you a wider variety of items to choose from, all from the comforts of home. But just because you get the convenience, it doesn’t mean you don’t get to get bargains and deals!
With Christmas just around the corner, everyone is bargain-hunting for the best gifts with the best savings, to wrap and place under the Christmas tree.
When somebody admits to you that they don't own a TV, they're usually being an elitist, condescending jerk. Here's how you defuse the vocal no-TV crowd: play naive and simply assume they haven't checked TV prices in a while and they think flat screens are still thousands and thousands of dollars. Then helpfully point them to this 40-inch large, full 1080p HDTV from Amazon that costs only $270 with free shipping. Tell 'em that even if they don't want to watch broadcast television, this Sceptre set features three HDMI ports for computers, streaming set-top boxes, and game consoles. Plus, if your TV-less friend says something silly like "I just want to watch [INSERT HOME NFL TEAM HERE]" you can tell him all he has to do is plug in an antenna. And when he still refuses to see your pro-big-screen point, buy this TV for yourself and laugh when he's still watching Netflix on his laptop.
The easiest way to convince your coworkers and colleagues that you're super-productive is to have a ton of screen space. Especially if your 2nd monitor only shows charts, trends, and graphs. When you peel your vision away from your Minority-Report-style screens for a minute, you'll look onto your poor single-screen having friends, and you'll know you're getting twice as much internet in your eyeballs as they are. Here's how I divide my screens up: business on the left, party on the right.
Designers are never satisfied with their resources, having a new element to use in each project is key to keeping designs unique. Icons are a really important part of a design, and this is why we know you will like the latest deal from DealPixel, 500 Beautiful Outline Vector Icons, a deal with 500 vector outline icons. The bundle is available for only $15. That is a 59% discount!
Though it’s obviously more of a show business story than it is a technology industry story, the news of Lucasfilm’s $4 billion sale to Disney has reverberated throughout the tech world this afternoon.
This is partly just because of Star Wars’ cult status among the geeks (and I use that term with all respect and love) who make the web go ’round. But also, Lucasfilm has straddled the worlds of tech and film in a unique way, with its headquarters in San Francisco instead of LA and its strong operations in tech- and engineering-heavy things such as visual effects, sound design, animation, and of course gaming.
Donald Trump offered to pay $5 million to the charity of President Barack Obama's choice if Obama releases his college and passport records, the real estate mogul and television personality said on Wednesday.
"Frankly, it's a check that I very much want to write," Trump said in a YouTube video released via his Twitter and Facebook pages.
Genealogy company Ancestry.com has been acquired by an investor group led by European private equity firm Permira for about $1.6 billion, the Wall Street Journal reports citing sources familiar with the matter.
Ancestry.com is a profitable company which operates a network of genealogical and historical record websites in the U.S. and abroad, including Genealogy.com, MyFamily.com, ProGenealogists, and Rootsweb.com.
The company has had over 2,000,000 paying subscribers as of June 2012; it expects a 2012 revenue of $473.0 to $480.0 million.
