Archive for July 3rd, 2008

Sony: US Demand Still Strong Despite Weakening Economy 1

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

In a statement to reporters today, Stan Glasgow, president and chief operating officer of Sony Electronics, said that Sony is seeing little or no sign of softer demand among U.S. consumers for its range of digital TVs, cameras and computer goods despite a weakening economy. "We are not seeing clear signs of softness. In the high end, it is hard to keep up with the full demand," he said of demand for Sony’s pricier flat-panel TV models.
Heading into the company’s current fiscal year that started in April, Glasgow said that he had taken into consideration the impact of spiraling oil prices and the housing credit crunch in forecasting Sony’s U.S. growth for the coming year. "I didn’t see so much good in the economic forecasts," he stated. But despite these cautious calculations, underlying demand continues to power sales of products across major categories. "Sony Electronics is growing at a substantial level in the U.S." relative to the fiscal year that ended in March of this year, Glasgow told Reuters. "We are exceeding the aggressive goals we set."

View: Full Story at Reuters

Google employee details stolen in burglary 0

Records kept at Colt Express Outsourcing Services, an external company Google and other companies use to handle human-resources functions, were stolen in a burglary on 26 May. An undisclosed number of employees’ details and those of dependents, such as names, addresses, and social security numbers, were on the stolen computers. It is understood that Colt did not employ encryption to protect the information.
It is still unclear how many more of Colt Express’s clients were affected by the breach. US employees of CNET Networks (publisher of ZDNet.co.uk) were also affected by the burglary, with around 6,500 employees’ details stolen.
Although there is no evidence of misuse of the data to date, the information obtained could be used by ID thieves to create fake accounts and identities.
It has only come to light now that Google was one of the companies affected. Google itself was not burgled, nor were any of its internal systems compromised.

View: ZDNet

Firefox download record official 0

Mozilla has officially made history with a new Guinness world record for the largest number of software downloads in a 24-hour period. The final record breaking 8,002,530 downloads for Firefox 3.0 took place in June with parties in over 25 countries. "The enthusiasm and creativity of Firefox fans was key to making this happen" said Marketing head Paul Kim. Gareth Deaves of Guinness World Records called it "an extremely impressive accomplishment".
The official figure was confirmed after logs from download servers were audited and checked to ensure duplicate and unfinished downloads were not counted. Mr Kim told the BBC: "The notion of going for a world record, as gooky and nutty as it may have sounded, was a really sticky idea. "It was an idea that translated really well across national borders and to all different kinds of people around the world."

View: Full Article @ BBC News