Apple has announced that it will replace the hard drives on MacBooks bought between 2006 and 2007 if you can prove that your hard drive has failed. The offer is open until August 15th of this year, or three years after the MacBook was purchased. Get additional details (via Gizmodo)

Image credit: TheYoungThousands

According to a a posting on Techflash Chris Liddell, who resigned last month as Microsoft’s chief financial officer, will receive a total of $1.9 million under a “resignation agreement” disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Microsoft will pay Liddell $950,000 on Dec. 31 and another $950,000 on March 31 compensation for the first half of the current 2010 fiscal year (which began on July 1), and for “performance of his obligations under the agreement,” according to the filing.

Liddell made a total of $3.7 million in salary, bonus and stock awards in fiscal 2009, according to the company’s proxy statement.

I will be attending Chris Pirillo’s Social Media conference, Gnomedex on August 20th in Seattle. It’s sure to be an interesting two days accelerating ideas around social media and online communities.

Search just got a jolt as Microsoft and Yahoo pull together in a 10 year deal to combine search efforts. Yahoo reported that with the Microsoft’s success with Bing, the two of them will work to divert ad revenue from Google.

Yahoo Inc. shares plunged $2.08, or 12 percent, to $15.14 as investors expressed disappointment over the absence of an immediate windfall. Microsoft Corp. shares gained 33 cents to $23.80 while Google Inc. shares shed $3.61 to $436.24.

Read the article on Yahoo’s Tech site

At least according to Forrester Research.

“The research firm nonetheless revised its forecast for 2009. It now expects the U.S. technology market to shrink by 5 percent this year. In March, Forrester had predicted a smaller 3 percent decline in spending on technology products and services.” According to a recent article on Online Athens.

I personally see that within the industry it feels like things are starting to slowly but surely pick up. I’m seeing more money being spent on marketing and advertising with lots of anticipation that things will be better by Q4 CY.

Many people I talk with are also feeling that there is a slight shift in the attitudes across the industry, it’s no more continual doom and gloom reminiscent of the dot.com bust. I for one am optimistic that when fall gets into swing we will also see an uptick in consumer confidence and high tech will be leading the way.

According to the May 2009 Mobile Metrics Report by AdMob, Apple is taking a big bite of the Smartphone market share. In their newly released study, they take a closer look at the iPhone apps within the AdMob network. “It is general knowledge that the top free apps are downloaded millions of times. But with an incredibly crowded App Store, one important question is what happens to the rest of the apps.” view the entire report on the AdMob website including more user statistics and breakdowns of demographics.

Google has launched their mobile version of Google AdSense, now available on the iPhone and Android platforms. Not surprising that Google was the first to implement full blow advertising in applications. What was once free, will now be a little less free as users of free apps will now be forced to sit through targeted advertising embedded into the application. Developers of the app do have the choice to decide what ads are shown, block certain ads and how they are shown. While users may be less than thrilled with the new addition of advertising be delivered through their apps, many marketing and advertising professionals are scrambling to buy ads. Continue Reading ->