Reports indicate that Motorola may be preparing to lay off thousands of employees, and this doesn’t bode well for all sorts of projects and divisions.  However, it seems that Google’s Android is being regarded as a potential company-saver, since it should both survive the cuts and become a central focus.

Sara Silver reports that Sanjay Jha, Motorola’s co-CEO, “is betting on Google’s Android operating system and just two other software platforms to speed development of sorely needed new models.  He plans to jettison at least four other platforms, limiting the number of employees required to do customization work for different wireless carriers.”

This represents a huge compliment to Google, which has dedicated all sorts of time and energy to creating and advertising Android.  Motorola’s essentially putting the search giant’s first try on an equal footing with what other companies have spent years refining.

The move also means that Android’s market share may grow more quickly than anyone had previously predicted.  Talk of it becoming as ubiquitous as the iPhone sounds a little less silly now.

Silver reports that Motorola’s first Android-based devices should appear sometime next year.  Stay tuned to see what happens.

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LinkedIn has introduced a number of new software applications, which are business focused in an effort to become more useful in the everyday workplace.

The LinkedIn Intelligent Applications (InApps) platform allows companies to develop professional applications for the sites members. It features applications from Amazon, Google, Box.net, Huddle, Six Apart, SlideShare, Tripit and WordPress.

The Amazon application is a reading list that allows LinkedIn members to share the books they are reading with others.

The Google application allows members to embed a presentation on their profile. Slideshare also allows members to share presentations with co-workers.

The WordPress application and the Six Apart application allow users to share their blog posts.

The Huddle applications gives members secure online workspaces with collaboration and sharing tools.

Box.net created an application that lets members share and manage files online.

Travel software company Tripit offers an application that shows where members are traveling and when connections will be in the same city.

LinkedIn also created an application of its own called Company Buzz that allows members to follow what is being said about their company on Twitter.

LinkedIn said it will continue to work with new partners to develop new applications.

“We set out to offer applications that enable people to more effectively collaborate with their networks on a wide range of daily professional activities,” said Dan Nye, CEO of LinkedIn. “We chose to work with leading companies whose services make sense for how our members use LinkedIn - for collaboration, information sharing and developing opportunities.”

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Sony America has announced it will be dropping the 4GB Memory PSP Entertainment Pack that had been previously scheduled to be released in the US.

The company made the decision “following discussions with our retail partners.”

The latest move means consumers will but one choice for purchasing the new PSP-3000, and that is the Ratchet & Clank Size Matters PSP Entertainment Pack.

PSP director of hardware marketing Jon Koller added that the bundle was dropped because they expected low sales from the bundle after hearing feedback from retailers and customers.

The 4GB Memory Stick Duo will be available separately for $45 USD.

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MTV has announced the launch of MTVMusic.com, an video site devoted to showing off MTV’s large music video catalog.

The new site includes 16,000 videos, tons of “MTV Uunplugged” performances and exclusive MTV concert footage. MTV says more videos are being added daily and they should have their full catalog up soon.

MTV Networks also has community features using its Flux technology, allowing users to rate videos, comment, and share the code on Facebook, MySpace and other sites.

The broadcaster will have an uphill battle winning market share back from YouTube but overall the new site is very good and should remain popular.

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Surfing around the net i found these screenshots of windows 7 on gizmodo

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Remember when you were a kid and you misbehaved? What was the first thing  your parents did to make you learn your lesson? Well, mine would take away my playstation and my tv. I could go WEEKS without my gaming fix. I do remember wishing i could run away to a world of fun and games but you know, thats not really logical is it… or isn’t it?

Well, one 15 year old canadian kid lost his xbox 360 privalages and has been missing ever since October 13th. Apparentlyn his parents took away his console and Call of Duty 4 privelages and he went missing that very same day. Do we blame him? Poor kid.

Anyway, jokes aside. Microsoft has decided to double the reward for the safe return of the child which currently stands at $25,000 CAD. Microsoft will also be revealing the information of the people he last played the game with in hopes that they will have more information for the canadian police.

This just goes to show how seriously these kids take gaming. It seems to resemble an addiction in my eyes.

If you are from canada and have more information, please use the contact form to email me. Right now i am going on information from various other blogs.

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Online advertising will continue to grow despite economic woes according to the latest analysis from eMarketer.

The majority of analyst firms expect to see spending growth for online advertising to continue to show double-digit increases in 2008 and 2009.

Globally, 91 percent of marketers are using online advertising, according to a McKinsey & Co survey of 340 senior marketing executives. Over half (55%) said they plan on cutting spending on traditional media in order to focus on Internet advertising.

A Forrester Research survey found that 25 percent of marketers would increase spending on online advertising due to an economic recession. In addition an Epsilon CMO survey from September revealed that 63 percent of marketers planned to increase their Internet advertising spending in 2008.

Some of the reasons online advertising is attractive to marketers is the ability to measure their campaigns and target their message more than other forms of media.

Online advertising also is more engaging to consumers and more young people are spending more time online per week they are watching television.

The Internet is the only channel that allows marketers to connect with consumers during the entire shopping process, from the research phase to the point of sale and post feedback.

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Good Old Games, a European gaming company, announced in July that it will begin allowing gamers to access and download old PC games that are very hard to find legally or have been abandoned.

The company will provide titles from as far back as the early 80’s and in a downloadable format that is completely DRM-free. The games will also be reasonably priced, ranging from $5.99 to $9.99 per title. Also, once you have purchased the title, you can download it whenever you want, all the times you want.

The store has now hit its public beta stage.

“You won’t find any intrusive copy protection in our games; we hate draconian DRM schemes just as much as you do,” says the site. “Once you download a game, you can install it on any PC and re-download it whenever you want, as many times as you need, and you can play it without an internet connection.”

If you are interested, the full catalog of games is available here: Good Old Games: Game Catalog

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Denon has announced the upcoming launch of it’s DVD-3800BD high-end Blu-ray player, one that promises “reference-standard” playback.

The player, according to Pocketlint,is “the first Blu-ray player to use the 10-bit Silicon Optix sxT2 HQV Realta chipset to provide the player with highest resolution HD video currently offered via an HDMI 1.3a connection with 36-bit deep color support. To ensure high-quality sound reproduction, Denon used a DDSC-HD audio output along with dual 32-bit floating-point Burr Brown DSPs and its AL24 processors and Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio decoders.”

The player will also have a noise reducing design as well a design set to reduce other signal-degrading interference. The design includes a “drive mechanism with dual-layer top and triple-layer bottom shields, a Suppress Vibration Hybrid loader for smooth disc handling and operation as well as separate video and power circuits.”

Also included in the player is an easily accessible SD card slot on the front panel to allow for playback of digital photos.

The new Denon player will cost about 1600 pounds in the UK when it releases in December.

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One month after launching their MySpace Music streaming service, the company has announced a new deal that will double the amount of indie music available through the service.

The deal, with the Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA), will add more than 1 million tracks from over 3000 indie labels to MySpace Music.

IODA founder and Chief Executive Kevin Arnold added that the songs will be added to the service in December.

MySpace music currently has several million tracks available to its 120 million users from the Big 4 labels as well as independent music distributor, The Orchard, whose catalog is over 1.3 million tracks.

Frank Hajdu, executive director of MySpace Music, noted that it was looking to add as much content as possible, as efficiently as possible.

“Many, many services that have been launched, they build their content catalogs out over time. If you wait indefinitely, you’ll never launch,” he added.

Hadju also noted that it was still in talks with the largest independent distributor, Merlin, who is in charge of digital distribution for over 15,000 labels.

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