- Palm, Inc. — or Palm Computing, or PalmSource, or palmOne — stole Jon Rubenstein away from Apple over a year ago and they now finally have a clue as to what to do next. They’re going to launch an operating system. Code-named Nova, it’s an operating system that Ruby promises to be not as business-y as BlackBerries and not as fun as the iPhone. To make a point of how awesome Palm thinks Nova will be, they’re going to announce it at CES in Las Vegas — exactly when Steve Jobs will be holding court in San Francisco. Smart, indeed.
- Jason Calacanis threw the curtains off the secret squirrel Project A: it’s an answers site called Mahalo Answers, where you can pay strangers to help you find stuff online. A genius idea, just like Yahoo Answers, or Google Answers, or Amazon Askville, or Answers Wiki.
- BitTorrent — the makers of the wildly popular file-sharing BitTorrent protocol — has been trying for years to go legit. They raised $17 million this year to help buy them some respect in Hollywood, but the grand plan has failed. An investor of the company has leaked that the original financing has been reversed and the money returned. BitTorrent raised a new round for $7 million on a $28 million valuation, instead. It’s okay, it just means they have to get a 2 for 1 deal on hookers, instead.
- Google — having spent good bundle of cash and even lending its CEO to Barack Obama’s Superfriends team — is requesting a faster Internet pipeline in Washington, so says the Wall Street Journal. What the issue really is about is something called network neutrality, whereby network operators can develop tiers of access to the Internet and charge accordingly. Well, it turns out the WSJ was just having one of those Fox News kind of days, because Lawrence Lessig smacked down the article by saying Google is still not evil and doesn’t want its own special access to the Internet. This is important.
- Santa Clara-based Magellan has decided to sell their entire consumer GPS division to a Taiwan electronics manufacturer, MiTAC. Not much difference, but just remember this next time you’re walking around Best Buy or Fry’s stores.
(Banner photo by Agile Mind)
