Sony Turns the Page With Its New Reader

Two e-book readers due in late August aim to close Sony's sales gap with Amazon, whose Kindle continues to sizzle, more 

WatchGuard buys BorderWare

In a deal of undisclosed size, Seattle's WatchGuard Technologies has purchased BorderWare Technologies of Toronto. BorderWare, a15-year-old company that specializes in email and Web security products, employs 90 people.

"This acquisition is extremely complementary and will allow WatchGuard to accelerate and further deliver on its vision of extending security solutions to protect corporate data, networks and applications," said WatchGuard CEO Joe Wang in a release.

Founded in 1996, WatchGuard was taken private in a $151 million cash deal led by private equity shop Francisco Partners three years ago.

The company said that little will change with BorderWare's products, customer support or channel programs as a result of the deal.

 

READ MORE and COMMENT, more 

Amazon's MP3 business gets some traction on Twitter

When I last did a survey of Amazon.com's various Twitter accounts, the biggest, for Amazon's MP3 digital music service, had 13,000 followers. Fast forward a few months and it now 860,000 followers. Can it be long before it hits the 1 million mark? Amazon MP3, which generates a stream of music deal alerts, continues to dwarf Amazon's other Twitter accounts.

The other official Amazon Twitter accounts I'm aware of are quite a bit smaller -- @amazondeals (15,000 followers), @amazongames (5,000), @amazonpayments (600), and @amazonwishlist (100). There's also the official @amazon account (5,000) and a mysterious @jeffbezos account, which has produced a single test tweet but managed to accumulate more than 400 followers. Amazon CTO Werner Vogels and Amazon web services evangelist Jeff Barr are also active on Twitter (with 6,000 and 4,000 followers, respectively).

Let me know if you're aware of other Amazon units on Twitter.

Amazon has been experimenting with Twitter in various ways this year. The online retailer created a URL shortener for products and integrated Twitter into its "Share with Friends" feature (If you share an Amazon product on Twitter, it automatically creates a tweet with the product name and short Amazon URL).

Amazon just announced it's acquiring online shoe retailer Zappos, which is an active user of Twitter and other social media. Amazon and Zappos make an interest contrast in the way they use Twitter -- with Amazon sticking mostly to deal alerts and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh tweeting his thoughts, interesting quotes, travel plans, and conversations with Snoop Dogg, in addition to highlighting his company.

Follow my updates on Twitter.

READ MORE and COMMENT, more 

Guest Post: We're better than this

Glenn Kelman: Anyone noticed how nasty the TechFlash comments have gotten lately? When I first arrived in Seattle after 17 years away, I was at a low point in my life, working for a company I hadn’t founded in a market I didn’t understand. It was this community that helped me find my way.

Aaron Finn pulled me aside to explain how display ads really work. Udai Shekawat, I remember, had to spell out what SEM stood for on a hike to Snow Lake. And the great Brad Silverberg – if there was a baseball card for software geniuses, I’d have his rookie card -- invited me to his house for an otherwise lonely holiday.

Later, after Redfin had picked a fight with the whole real estate industry, and our blog posts were routinely attacked by Realtors out for blood, I thought, “Now these people, these people are animals.” I was relieved by the certainty that the folks in tech were my people. I had your back -- I still do -- and you had mine.

Well now the civilized conversations are happening on the real estate blogs, and we’re the ones tearing each other part.

more 

Market Leader's sales continue to fall as real estate slump persists

The tough real estate market continues to take a toll on Market Leader, the Kirkland provider of online marketing tools to real estate professionals. The company said that revenue declined to $5.9 million in the second quarter, down from $10.1 million for the same period last year.

The company -- formerly known as HouseValues -- also posted a net loss of $3 million for the quarter. It finished the quarter with $55 million in cash and cash equivalents.

According to Google Finance and Yahoo Finance, the company today had a market capitalization of $47.5 million.

The company said in the release that its customer attrition rates are slowing. But it also noted that times remain tight:

While existing home sales improved in the second quarter compared to the first quarter level, research from REAL Trends, Inc. shows that real estate commissions declined once again in the second quarter. Market Leader expects real estate professionals to continue to remain cautious regarding new marketing expenditures as they recover from the industry slowdown.

 

READ MORE and COMMENT, more 

Microsoft retiring its Evite rival

Add another consumer service to the Microsoft dustbin. The Windows Live team says it's discontinuing Windows Live Events in stages starting next month and ending next year. The company is encouraging people to use Windows Live Calendar to plan and manage events.

Microsoft launched the service in October 2007, hoping to rival Evite and other online events sites. Less than two years later, Windows Live Events has turned out to be about as effective in that mission as MSN Soapbox was in taking on YouTube.

"In order to focus and prioritize our resources on Windows Live, we are retiring Windows Live Events and encouraging people to use Windows Live Calendar for their event organizing needs," a Microsoft representative said in response to our inquiry. "With Windows Live Calendar we’re making it easier to manage and share your events, to-do lists and reminders all from one place."

A post on the Windows Live blog yesterday outlined the process by which Windows Live Events will be retired, saying that the ability to add events will go away early next month. "You’ll still be able to access and edit your existing events until 2010," the post added, "and we encourage you to save your photos and files from your existing events before then."

Microsoft in recent months has announced plans to discontinue a series of consumer products and services -- including the Encarta encyclopedia, Windows Live OneCare security program and Digital Image Suite photo software -- as part of its effort to cut costs.

(Via CNet News.com)

READ MORE and COMMENT, more 

Microsoft's Mac unit schedules mysterious news conference

Microsoft's Mac Business Unit, which makes Microsoft Office and other programs Apple computers, today scheduled a news conference call for Thursday, Aug. 13, without any hint of what it will be announcing -- saying only that it has "some exciting news to share." It's an unusual move for a division of the company that isn't known for big surprises.

We don't yet have any further insight, but if Microsoft were to come out with a version of Office for the iPhone, the Mac unit would be the natural division to produce it, given its experience writing software for Apple platforms. The conference call will feature Eric Wilfrid, the Mac BU general manager. When we quizzed him about the possibility of an Office app for iPhone earlier this year, he didn't rule it out.

"It's something we're looking at, clearly," Wilfrid said at the time. "Our mission is delivering Microsoft productivity to Mac customers. There are a lot of Mac customers who have iPhones, so we'll think about it through that lens. What is it that we might be able to do on the iPhone that would help Mac customers be productive, and contribute to the business that we've built and to the connections to Microsoft software and services. But we still don't have any iPhone news to share at this point."

Of course, it's possible that they still won't have any iPhone news to share next week, and the announcement could be about something else entirely. But Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft's Business Division, also has hinted at the possibility of an Office iPhone app.

Microsoft already offers mobile versions of Office apps for Windows Mobile, but an expansion to the iPhone would put the company in a delicate position, given the fact that it's planning to launch a rival to the iPhone App Store on Windows Mobile later this year.

READ MORE and COMMENT, more