Usually, we head over to a community answers site like Yahoo! Answers to get practical information. When a genius physicist like Stephen Hawking does it, he’s broaching somewhat weightier topics. On July 4th, he asked, “In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?” Wow, that’s pretty heavy, Doc. Check out some of the responses (“They will live underground,” “It’s UNITY baby,” “Lighten up”) before proceeding to the slightly less portentous substance of these links:
Shake it up On the same day that eBay banished Google Checkout from its sight, the online auction house was sending one of its own packing. Forbes says that Jeff Jordan, the head of eBay’s PayPal service, will be replaced by Raji Dutta, the erstwhile head of Skype, eBay’s internet telephony service. Those were just two of the moves in a huge, top-heavy reorganization that one Wall Street analyst viewed with “concern.”
Tribe to invade iVillage? PaidContent is closely following a story about a possible move by NBC to acquire Tribe.net, a social network known for its popularity with the Burning Man crowd. In the “letter-of-intent stage,” the deal would reportedly be worth less than $5 million. NBC would likely use Tribe’s technology to pump up the flaccid social functions of iVillage, another recent Peacock acquisition.
And the genius marketing ploy of the week goes to… Sony, for its somewhat questionable taste in billboards. To promote its new white colored game console in the Netherlands, Sony is using a ginormous image of a glowering white model forcefully grabbing the face of a black model, along with the words, “White is coming.” Uhh…thanks for the heads up, but we have to back away slowly now. Runner up: We’ll leave this one to MarketingShift: “Michigan residents who are customers of Consumers Energy and lose power can go online to report the outages instead of calling on the phone.” Sure. On their bicycle-powered computer.
“Employees must wash hands before, during, and after…” CNet runs down “Seven of Microsoft’s hardware hits and misses.” For our money, skip to number seven: the “iLoo,” dreamed up by the UK wing, a portable toilet with built-in internet hookup, a screen and a wireless keyboard (think we’re calling that one a “miss”).
