Even though we still don’t know when we’ll be seeing a production Lexus LF-A and, rumor has it, the program has been considered for cancellation, Toyota rolled out its race version at the Toyota Motorsports Festival at Fuji Speedway. The LF-A — the same one that raced this summer’s Nurburgring 24 Hours — was piloted by Akio Toyoda, the company’s Executive Vice President and chief proponent of the LF-A program. The appearance comes amid mixed rumors of the LF-A future. According to Edmunds Inside Line, Toyoda was able to keep the LF-A alive, albeit in an altered form. Instead of...
MySpace Music just “officially” launched earlier this year in September, and it has unsurprisingly become an integral part in MySpace’s overall product map moving forward. To help steer that product map in the right direction is Courtney Holt, the newly appointed President of MySpace Music. As a former Executive Vice President of Digital Music for the MTV Networks Music and Logo Group, Holt has worked with the music and the web-based aspects of both industries. Specifically, Holt has worked on several initiatives for engaging audiences online and offline–something he’ll likely bring to his new position as the MySpace Music...
Negotiations must have taken awhile, but music industry veteran Courtney Holt is now officially the new chief executive of MySpace Music. Word leaked out about Holt’s interest in the job earlier month. MySpace Music, meanwhile, went ahead and launched at the end of September after passing over several other candidates. Still, the joint venture between social network MySpace and major record labels could use a guy like Holt at the helm. He’s been working in new media promotion at record labels since the 1990s, and more recently has been helping to run MTV at Viacom. MySpace Music, a part of...
According to InfoWorld, Marco Boerries, executive vice president and head of Yahoo’s Connected Life Division, let it slip that T-Mobile and Yahoo will be announcing a partnership to put the Yahoo OneSearch button on T-Mobile phones. If this rumor pans out, this is good news for Yahoo whose financial struggles are, well, numerous. Yahoo OneSearch may be Yahoo’s ray of hope as OneSearch is doing rather well in the mobile search market. AT&T also inked a deal with Yahoo back in September to bring OneSearch to AT&T handsets. Yahoo has an exclusive deal with O2 in the UK and...
For the guy who wants a Vudu system but demands a rack-mountable setup, the Vudu XL2 is here to foot the bill in Armani boots. It's essentially a Vudu XL in a premium aluminum package, storing a terabyte of content while squeezing within one rack unit of space. The catch is that it's priced at $1300 and still runs $40 extra for an IR remote attachment. But hey, it costs to be Mr. I Have a Custom Home Theater Installer. Read on for the full details. VUDU DEBUTS MOST ADVANCED ON-DEMAND BOX EVER Available Exclusively Through Professional Home Theater Installers,...
Ribbit, the web phone company recently acquired by BT for $105 million, is has opened its developer platform to the general public. Although the Mountain View, Calif. company makes useful applications like the recently-updated Ribbit for Salesforce, the most exciting part of its technology is the platform, which promises to allow anyone to add phone capabilities to their web applications. The platform has been in beta testing for the last few months, and there are already more than 7,500 members signed up in Ribbit’s developer community. Until now, if anyone wanted to voice-enable their applications with Ribbit, they needed the...
Here’s what I’m curious about: 1. Nortel is planning on cutting 1,300 positions but despite announcing plans on Sept. 17 that it was restructuring, no one seems to have lost their job yet other than four senior executives: John Roese, Lauren Flaherty, Dietmar Wendt and Bill Nelson. It seems like a bizarre way to conduct business. Imagine if you’re a hard-working Nortel employee, and you have no idea whether you’re going to be among the 25% who’s going to lose their job over the next two months or one of the 75% slated to get turfed in early-2009. So,...
