blackleafmedia

Yahoo Finally Flexes Some Muscle in Proxy Fight

Yahoo has finally decided to show it is not going to roll over in it’s proxy fight with Carl Icahn. Right on it’s home page, they have a link to a page bringing more attention to this proxy battle. Yahoo’s home page is one of the most viewed pages on the entire web. It’s trying to inform the stockholders and general public who aren’t familiar with what is going on about how Icahn is trying to oust the current board.

Personally, it was a massive mistake for Yahoo to walk away from Microsoft’s $33 a share offer despite the fact Yahoo is a completely different corporate culture than Microsoft. I do think they will be able to convince enough stockholders to stop Icahn.

Yahoo! Stockholder Information.

Is TechCrunch losing its credibility?

According to TechCrunch, they are now reporting that the Yahoo-Microsoft deal is back on. TechCrunch has really been pushing some of these stories lately with very little if any sources. I used to take what TechCrunch said as gold, but I think they are just throwing this stuff out their and hope it comes true so it looks like they got a scoop.

I just do not see this one happening; If it was going to, they would have made something happen by now. All I know is that I probably wont be believing a whole lot of what TechCrunch has to say from here on out. Take this “scoop” with a grain of salt.

Yet Another New Feature!

Soon I will be adding a new feature to blackleafmedia: Tech Questions! But I need your help. I need a load of questions to answer! So, I need to know what you guys want to know. It can be anything related to technology: cell phones, computers, MP3 players, you name it.

So how can I participate you ask? Just go to the Tech Questions page and enter your question there. Your first name will be featured (or hidden if you would like) when I cover your question. If you have a web site, make sure you enter so I can plug it for you.

Make sure to use the Share This button below this post to add this to social network sites or also to email it to friends and family. Helping to get posts of mine submitted to sites like Digg and making them popular tremendously increases the pairs of eyes my site is seen by. Please help me advertise this new feature as I know I can turn this site into a goldmine of technology information. Thanks for the help!

Help Set A World Record This Tuesday!

If you are still using the security flaw called Internet Explorer, please help us out to set a world record this Tuesday. I’m sure even if you use Internet Explorer, you have heard of Firefox. Maybe you didn’t know that you could use Firefox instead, maybe you were so used to Internet Explorer.

Do yourself a favor on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008. Help us set the Guinness World Record for the Most Software Downloads in 24 Hours. Firefox 3 is going to be release that day. Download it and try it out! It’s faster than Internet Explorer, it has better support of web standards, and probably most importantly it is SAFER. Internet Explorer is one large security breach.

Too much E-mail!

My mother of all people sent me this great article about what a few of the larger tech companies in the country are doing to reduce email overload. Many companies have a hard time of getting a good balance between giving everyone clear lines of electronic communication and being able to let people get things done.

One thing that I have noticed is that some people think that because you have email means that someone will respond to you immediately. In one place I worked at, most of the time you would get a call 10 minutes after someone sent an email to see if you had fixed their “important” problem which usually consisted of them trying to use MySpace at work and wondering why their browser got all funky and slow. After a while, I had to just clue some people in that a problem with a server is usually  more important of them accessing MySpace.

Creators of E-Mail Monster Now Try to Tame It

Digsby - The Trillian killer?

I have always tried to shy away from instant messenger systems as they always turned into a huge time-sink for me. As soon as I would get into something, someone would always be messaging me with some lame and totally knock me off track. I have since become a rather organized person and have finally realized I need to use one no matter what. The main problem with this situation is that everyone uses a different service.

Multi network messengers are nothing new. Trillian has been the main one to use on Windows XP, OS X has Adium, and Linux has Pidgin. However, Digsby has some master strokes. It has one combined buddy list for AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber networks. It will also allow you to get notified of Hotmail, Gmail, Yahool, AOL/AIM , IMAP, and POP mail messages. You can also keep tabs on your MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.

The negatives of such a handy program? The only real major beef I have with Digsby is a voracious appetite for RAM. I have 1.5 gigabytes of RAM on my main machine running Windows XP. Typical RAM usage is around 75-80 megabytes of RAM when the program is open but idle. I always have the RAM to spare, but I think it really could be optimized. The other side of that is I am sure having all the instant messengers it replaces would use even more RAM, as well as not having Digsby’s relatively uncluttered interface.

The tide is turning on Microsoft

I was reading an interesting article over at Techcrunch about Microsoft’s launch of LiveMesh. In a nutshell, LiveMesh will bring even better setup for an online virtual desktop and easier file sharing between computers and devices. As we move to a lot of “cloud” computing applications, it’s good to see Microsoft not behind the curve on this one. However, I still have to take issue with one thing brought up.

I understand why this will only allow you to sync devices that run Windows clients. However, especially with Microsoft Vista’s lukewarm (to put it nicely) reception, a lot more people are looking at Apple’s OS X and even Linux. They can’t just support Windows anymore. I plan to buy an Apple Macbook Pro next, and I already use Ubuntu Linux 8.04 at home and professionally a good deal. I will still have to deal with Windows as my wife will not leave Windows, so chances are I will have all 3 operating systems running just at my home.

I will give credit where credit is due, and Windows XP is a fantastic operating system. Too bad I will never only use Windows again after XP is finally dead.