There’s a report out saying that Cisco Systems, the guys consumers probably know best as the makers of Linksys networking products, are considering stepping into the productivity software fray. They wouldn’t start selling discs (who does that anymore?), but would instead make their software available online a la Google Docs and Adobe Buzzword.

Corporations, the biggest entities which consume software, fork over a lot of money each year to Microsoft for its Office suite of applications, so all these companies who’re getting into the fray are hoping to steal some of that $60 billion pie. Of course, that requires two things. The first is that Cisco needs to get companies to trust that, not only would their servers not go down ever so that businesses could have access to their time-sensitive materials when they need it, but that the servers would be well protected. Google Docs had a bug earlier this year that marked 0.05% of documents saved on its servers public, which is just not an acceptable error for businesses.

The other thing that Cisco would have to do is make sure to build good applications. One of the reasons why people fork over money to Microsoft is …

If you’re a computerless kid in Maine, an education proponent, or an Apple shareholder (or some hideous, deformed combination of the three), good news! Maine’s Department of Education has “ordered more than 64,000 MacBooks for students and faculty, with an additional 7,000 that will be ordered in the coming weeks.” This is part of a program to give every minor in the state’s public school system a Macbook. For education, the benefits are pretty obvious: students who have good resources at their fingertips do better, and laptops are a great way to help kids learn. But what’s more important is now that the Macs are going home with the kids, we can expect the state of Maine to raise a whole generation of Apple faithfuls.

People like things that they are used to, which is something Apple realized long ago. My elementary school and high school was a more or less PC-free zone. But I’m a PC user largely because that’s what I had at home. If my school had given me a portable Mac to use at home, there’s a pretty good chance that would be different. Apple is set to …

Comcast is not my favorite company.  You know why, if you actually use the internet. But as I am currently typing this post via a Comcast provided internet connection (ie: I pay them, they give me internet), I have to cover this. Comcast is now launching their splendid new 4G network, with the help of Clearwire, and some WiMax love.

Brilliantly called “Comcast High-Speed 2go,” it is about twice as fast as the 3G access you are used to having on your iPhone. Not bad, at an average 4 megabits. It is coming to Portland Or, where I am currently located, today. While I am not shelling out the extra bucks (iPhone 3G tethering is fine for me), someone is.

This is a big deal, if you live in a soon to be supported metro area, have extra money to blow, dislike finding wifi, and want to give Comcast money to continue being assholes. Or: a big deal for seven people. When they actually manage to fling the signal far enough to make wireless actually not feel like “crap-im-out-of-range-fi” I will pay attention.

Today is a big day for everyone at TechGeist: we are proud to annouce the launch for SocialGeist, our newest property. SocialGeist, like TechGeist will feature trend setting writing on cutting edge topics. However, instead of focusing on the more technical aspects of technology, it will focus on the people involved. The social aspect, if you will. SocialGeist will feature TechGeist author Holden Page as its editor, and we are excited to bring on our fifth author Daniel Monzelowsky as the second contributing SocialGeist author.

Both SocialGeist and TechGeist remain under the same corporate umbrella, NextTech. Everyone here in the team is wildly excited about this launch, and we think that you will be once you get  a look at what we are building. So, head over to SocialGeist and take a look around, throw it in your RSS reader, and let’s get to work.

In a fit of American solipsism, we tend to disregard what’s going on in the rest of the world (the current situation in Iran aside). When it comes to bailouts, the American government is not the only group throwing money at problems. For its first bailout, the Japanese government has given $1.7 billion in both public and private money to Elpida Memory, the only maker of DRAM (dynamic random access memory) in Japan. This amount is only a fraction of the $21 billion the Japanese government has set aside for more aid to private companies. While I don’t want to use this space to talk about the economics behind bailouts in general, I do want to focus in on why Elpida may not be the best way to invest such a large sum of money.

While it’s undestandable that a country may want to keep the only company it has working in a certain aspect of industry, the semiconductor sector is one that’s set to see a lot of closing of companies in the near future. An analyst prediction from back in April, which seems pretty well-founded, predicts that …

If you haven’t noticed it already, Gmail SMS is down once again. As you might already know Gmail SMS was pulled due to technical issues after going live once in October. While the official post said SMS would be back in about two weeks it turned out to be a lot longer wait and wasn’t officially re-released until early December. Since then Gmail SMS has been a pretty stable feature but it doesn’t seem like the Gmail team agrees.

According to a Google Spokesperson, Gmail SMS was disabled because it was once again causing issues for people. There is no set timeline as to when Gmail SMS will be back up and running so until then we are going to have to sit tight and wait it out. Keep in mind, Gmail SMS is a labs feature and the Gmail team has made it pretty clear that this could happen. Let’s just hope for the users who were dependant upon Gmail SMS on a regular basis that it gets back up and running.

One particular interesting thing to note is that SMS messages being sent from a mobile phone can still be retrieved in your …

I know that you probably do not enjoy annual meetings of companies. These meetings for even the hottest company can easily be surpassed on the excitement scale by watching paint dry while blindfolded competitions. Yahoo’s recent annual meeting was nothing of the sort if you read between the lines. Fortunately both Businessweek and the WSJ liveblogged the whole deal a few days ago. After reading and comparing notes from the around the internet, we have the dirty bits for you to read.

Let’s start with search: Yahoo is screwed. Quick, what does BOSS stand for? Yeah, I thought so. That is one of Yahoo’s largest pushes on the search front Carol Bartz (CEO) brought up. Even more, Yahoo will not be working with Google on search, period. Something about the government disliking the move. Or put more carefully: we are not in a position to fight this, and Google is not going to pick a fight with regulators over a deal with us. We are alone, and our search offerings will continue to be third rate.

In regards to the small and unused bits of the Yahoo-verse that waste money, Carol …

Here is a small morsel of good news if you are still reeling from the turmoil of the past several weeks: China has pulled back from its “Green Damn Youth Escort” software. You recall Green Damn, it was that buggy trash software that China put out to filter the internet, and control its populace. That Green Dam, not this one.

Of course, China was under intense pressure from literally everyone: the US, the EU, hackers, its population. It is one thing to do as Britain does, and slowly lock down a populace with cameras, searches, and brutal laws, but far another to merely announce that you will control all of their information influx. The Chinese government’s hubris can still surprise, even to this day. If they are playing a hearts and minds campaign, they are failing.

Perhaps they will merely attempt to patch the software, and go at it again, at which point PC manufacturers will have yet another choice: give in? In all honesty, if all the PC manufacturers refused it, the Chinese government would be in trouble. Computers are a vital aspect of the modern economy, and the Chinese …

Adobe, maker of your favorite products to pirate, is shutting down for a week, to boost profitability. Adobe has plans for a third shutdown of its North American operations later this year, after this shutdown follows the first from April. Adobe of course is already known as the odd company that does not operated between Christmas and New Years, a bit like a Middle School. Of course, the company is not releasing any data on this shutdown, so all we can do is speculate.

Here is a start, Adobe is already profitable. For the quarter ending on May 29 the company was 126 million dollars profitable. The shutdowns hardly make sense considering that, unless they are timed in the development cycle so perfectly that they help give developers a rest. But in a company of Adobes size, you can bet that developers are harder to find than at your local bootstrapped startup.

Apparently Adobe’s management has found the formula: the minimum number of employee hours to still maximize profit. In the current economic climate, it is hard to blame them.

–Update–

Industry veteran @Guze has pointed out that shutdowns between Christmas and New Years are quite common in the Valley. The author apologizes for …

The reasons behind the Pirate Bay’s owners’ decision to sell the site to Global Gaming Factory X, paving the way for a legal version of the famous torrent site, are certainly many, though a few obvious explanations come to mind. The founders were the target of a lot of flak, including the ridiculous trial which had each one of them ordered to pay over $1 million in fines. At the end of the day, it was a pretty annoying thing to maintain. It cost a lot of money and had tons of traffic to deal with. So selling it and creating a legal version is not only wise from a top-down founder perspective, but for a lot of the users out there.

The first problem users are going to have is that they can’t copyrighted materials for free anymore, but that’s missing the big picture of what a legal media repository can be.  While TPB trackers themselves are closing, the torrents and files are not going away. Rather, they are switching to more decentralized model, where TBP files will be exchanged over third-party trackers, so the filesharing aspect isn’t going away. …