Real Networks said today that it informed 130 employees, or 7.5 percent of its worldwide workforce, that their positions would be eliminated at the end of year.  In a post on the company’s official blog, the company said the layoffs were part of a larger cost cutting plan that “is intended to bring expenses in [...]

The curtain has been officially raised on Facebook Connect, a feature that links partner Web sites with the profiles of Facebook members.(Techmeme) Everyday, Facebook looks more and more like a platform instead of just another social networking site. Now, using Facebook Connect, members can share information about the things they’re doing outside of Facebook with the [...]

Microsoft has hired former Yahoo executive Qi Lu to run its online services business. Lu will start on January 5 and report directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, according to a CNET report. The company also announced that Brian McAndrews, the former CEO of Aquantive and a Microsoft advertising executive considered to be the leading internal [...]

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At the Always On Venture Summit in Half Moon Bay, Calif., a panel of solar energy executives debates whether or not silicon prices will fall as the industry matures. While they all think margins will narrow, they disagree on whether there will be an industry wide shakeout, or if the polysilicon and silicon wafer markets [...]

Have blogs become the new AP for news outlets? The New York Times has announced the launch of Times Extra, an online view of its front page that comes with links to content from other news outlets and blogs. For a long time, news outlets have been proprietary in what they report, largely because they put [...]

As promised, AMD issued its fourth quarter update Thursday and it wasn’t pretty. In a terse statement, AMD said that sales for the fourth quarter will be 25 percent lower than the third quarter tally of $1.58 billion. AMD said its projections don’t include process and technology license revenue, so comparisons to Thomson Reuters data is [...]

JDA and i2 said they are calling off their supply chain wedding plans amid an uncertain economic picture. In August (statement), JDA agreed to buy i2 for $346 million, or $14.86 a share, in cash. On Wednesday, i2 shares closed at $7.70. JDA was going to finance the deal with debt to avoid dilution to shareholders. [...]

AT&T said Thursday that it will cut about 12,000 jobs, or 4 percent of its workforce, due largely to “economic pressures.” The layoffs are beginning to sound like a broken record (or MP3). AT&T said it wants to streamline its operations as its business morphs to one that’s largely dependent on wireless service (statement). AT&T added [...]

In this week’s EIC squared podcast Dan and I talk about the Yahoo rumor mill, the holiday shopping season on tech land and the Mumbai terror attacks and Twitter. First the Yahoo rumor mill. The latest is that former AOL CEO Jonathan Miller is trying to raise a few billion to take Yahoo private. Yeah right. [...]

Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Thursday said it will publish data sets such as the Human Genome, U.S. Census and labor statistics to its cloud to make the information easier to access for researchers. For starters, Amazon will publish various U.S. Census databases from the U.S. Census Bureau, 3-D chemical structures provided by Indiana University and [...]