Should Microsoft change its formula to 100 percent cash, it’ll be interesting to see if it locks in the price based on its current 50-50 formula or sets it at a flat rate of $31 a share, the value of Microsoft’s initial buyout bid for Yahoo.

Silicon Alley Insider has a close-to-real-time running tab of the [...]

The round was led by venture firm DCM, with contributions from several private investors. Previous RockYou investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Partech International, and Sequoia Capital.
Disclosure: CBS, one of RockYou’s past clients, has agreed to acquire CNET Networks, publisher of News.com. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter.
Along with Slide, RockYou is [...]

The studios will also make available many older titles, including Braveheart, Forrest Gump, and The Blair Witch Project, along with titles from the Godfather, Star Trek, and James Bond franchises.
The companies made no specific mention of an online component for the venture, but did make reference to “the digital marketplace of the future,” and [...]

Nokia on Thursday reported a loss for its third quarter of 559 million euros ($832 million) compared with a profit of 1.09 billion euros in the same quarter of 2008.
The net loss for the period that ended September 30 was triggered by declining sales, which fell 20 percent to 9.18 billion euros from 12.2 billion [...]

Verizon trotted out a low-cost all-you-can-eat data plan for its subcribers Monday, although it’s only available on a few phones.
The Motorola Q9m is one of the three phones eligible for a new Verizon data plan.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
If you’ve got a Motorola Q9m, a Verizon Wireless SMT5800 (HTC) or a Verizon Wireless XV6800 (UTStarcom), you can [...]

SupportSpace is a new tech-support network. It certifies independent tech experts and connects them with people in need. I’m unclear how this certification and rating works, but I imagine it’s based partly on feedback from users. The company provides call connection, desktop-sharing services, and other utilities to its contractors.

It’s a shame that this service [...]

The content-filtering software the Chinese government wants installed on all PCs sold in that country beginning next week was poorly developed and puts users at risk of having their computers compromised, a security expert who examined the code said on Thursday.
The Chinese government is requiring that all PCs include the Green Dam-Youth Escort software [...]

As we Twitt-iots sit around bemoaning the fact that we can’t send each other useless junk on a flaky service, I thought I would take this chance to address the notion that this message-scaling problem is new.

It’s not. It’s very common, and it can be solved.
Scaling a messaging platform is why IBM sells [...]

SAN FRANCISCO–For Ron Meiners, the aha! moment came during Burning Man 2006.

A longtime attendee of the countercultural arts festival, Meiners had been thinking about how one would explain what Burning Man is to someone who had never been. The answer, he decided, was obvious: an opera.

In typical Burning Man fashion, as he was standing in [...]

When Steve Jobs sneezes, everyone pays attention. On Thursday, he blew out the doors on the iPhone with an array of alliances and applications that make the device less of a phone and more of a powerful computer in the palm of your hand. You can see where the so-called smartphone is heading, and Apple [...]