A round-up of the companies, deals, and trends that made headlines.
Every day, the Coins2Day staff spends hours poring over tech stories, posts, and reviews from all over the Web to keep tabs on the companies that matter. We’ve assembled the morning’s most newsworthy bits below.
- Interview of the week: The Wall Street Journal’s sit-down with IBM CEO Samuel J. Palmisano. During the revelatory chat, Palmisano trash talks HP (HPQ), basically calling it a has-been innovator. (Wall Street Journal)
- Speaking of IBM (IBM), the company also acquired OpenPages, which deploys software to help companies isolate and manage enterprise risk elements, for an undisclosed amount. (VentureBeat)
- Mobile ad network Greystripe, which became popular because it enables animated, interactive on Apple’s Flash-free devices, says advertisers are shifting their attention from apps to mobile Web sites. Advertisers are apparently drawn because there are fewer native apps to advertise in on non-Apple platforms, which are booming; meanwhile publishers are shifting gears because they’re tired of releasing different versions of the same app across multiple devices. (ReadWriteWeb)
- E-tailer to watch: One Kings Lane. Backed by Kleiner Perkins, First Round Capital, and Reid Hoffman, the curated site’s revenue is up 500% over last year. (TechCrunch)
- Microsoft launched the Internet Explorer 9 beta, and GigaOM’s Simon Mackie put it through its paces. His findings? While it’s leagues better than previous versions — it includes support for newer web standards like HTML5 — Chrome, Safari, and Firefox still have the edge in pure speed and features. (GigaOM)
- Yahoo Senior VP of Advertising Products David Ku is leaving the company. A long-time employee known for “getting things done,” Ku is the second high-profile departure from Yahoo (YHOO) this year. Executive Vice President Ash Patel, one of the company’s first employees, left back in March. (TechCrunch)
- Halo: Reach, for the Xbox 360, generated $200 million in day-one sales, an industry record. (gamesindustry)
- Conviva, a company that specializes in optimizing video streaming, announced it nabbed $15 million in funding, bringing total capital to $44 million since its 2006 launch. Recently, Conviva’s tech was used for the 2010 World Cup. (VentureBeat)
- How much do we wish that story about Steve Jobs and his confiscated ninja stars was true? Enough for a Taiwanese news organization to create this fictional CGI reenactment. (9to5Mac)
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- A slideshow video of an emulated webOS 2.0 has made its way to YouTube. It’s not nearly as exciting as the original video, which the user was forced to take down, but it does hint at some of the user interface tweaks and new features like card stacks, universal search and app pages. A word to the wise: dial down the volume unless 90s-era synth is your thing. (BoyGeniusReport)
[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvvaASsrHQo&w=600&h=375]