The computer maker said Wednesday that it will close all 140 of its U.S. kiosks as part of the company’s ongoing shift in how it sells its products. The company launched the kiosk effort in 2002 as a way for customers to see products firsthand before ordering online or by phone.

Dell spokesman Bob Kaufman said [...]

The crew at Facebook has done well to amass a huge war chest (Microsoft’s $240 million investment), 66 million members, 200,000 developers, 16,000 applications, 500 employees and somewhere between $100 million and $200 million in revenue for last year.

The Google and Facebook cultures are not dissimilar–both are engineering driven. But Sandberg brings high-level sales and [...]

(Credit:
Microsoft)

Microsoft is aiming XP Mode primarily at small businesses, Woodgate said.”That’s a class of customers that may have Windows XP apps that they may want to run on Windows 7,” he said.

As noted on Friday, Microsoft is using its Virtual PC technology to allow
Windows 7 users to run programs that work in Windows XP [...]

By now, most of us are used to the ads we see in our Web-based e-mail . But if you are paying for the e-mail service, those ads might be extra annoying.
AOL has been offering free e-mail for the past two years but still sells dial-up subscriptions that include e-mail and other services.
[...]

Just to be clear, though, I find the statement reported by AFP to be entirely inconclusive. We don’t know what will happen yet. Perhaps the government will announce details, and it seems likely that some or all filtering will cease during the Olympics, but we’ll just have to wait and see.
(Hat tip to Richard at [...]

While Huberman has done innovative research showing how novelty and popularity interact on social sites (PDF) such as Digg and Facebook, the impact of this research on HP is notably old-fashioned.

No, not yet. Everything is still running through knowledge gate keepers within HP, to be doled out, it appears, via sales pitches and service [...]

Even though Hansen said he’d prefer to have a uniform federal policy on issues like electronic waste laws so companies don’t have to have a different product or program for each of the 50 states, the states demand his group’s attention. “The fact of the matter is, that’s where things move,” he said.

At a meeting [...]

The BBC’s iPlayer TV catch-up service is making its way to the
Nintendo Wii today. British residents who navigate to www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer using Opera’s Internet Channel browser will be greeted by the same selection of streaming programs made available for PC users.

Previous iPlayer coverage:
iPlayer gets iPhone support
BBC’s iPlayer getting Mac version in 2008, Web version continues [...]

So while this effort on my part remains woefully inadequate, it’s more important than ever to spotlight the man and his work. This month marks the March 1960 anniversary of the publication of “Man-Computer Symbiosis” and I recommend it to anyone not familiar with the paper. This was one of those “present at the creation” [...]

Before the keynote address, Yang casually talked to attendees about becoming a father again (his wife is pregnant with a girl) and telling CNET News.com that he couldn’t comment on the Microsoft situation.
Later in the day a Microsoft executive said his company was still very excited about the possibility of merging with [...]