Technology

Research In Motion has adjusted its revenue and earnings guidance for the third quarter. The handset maker blamed an unfavorable foreign exchange rate and the sagging economy. People just aren’t willing to spend 500 bucks on a new crackberry anymore. And corporate sales of new phones have certainly dropped.

But RIM itself is partially to blame. The company’s two new phones, the Blackberry Bold and the Storm, were not released on time. And the latter, a supposed iPhone-killer, has gotten pretty lukewarm reviews.

Rounding out the sunny day on Wall Street: Hewlett Packard, the world’s largest PC maker, posted better than expected results today. The company grew revenue by 19 percent to over 33 billion dollars in the 4th quarter.

The company has experienced a slowdown in computer sales, just like everyone else, but HP’s business model is very diversified. Its other areas like printers, sales, services, and software have helped the company to continue growing during the economic downturn.

There was some excitement today In the fledgling consumer market. The newest BlackBerry, the BlackBerry Storm, forced businessmen and early adopters into the cold at 6am this morning. Everyone wants a crack at the CrackBerry with a touch screen.

“People love touch screens, this touch screen is special. It’s a click screen, a continuation of a touch screen and a physical button that you touch down. That’s a brand new technology,” said Sasha Segan, a PC Magazine Analyst.

Dell missed expected revenue results for the current quarter yesterday, but somehow, they managed to pull out better-than-expected profit results. The company missed its revenue target by more than 1 billion dollars, but profit ONLY dropped 40 million. Yes…that’s better than the company and analysts expected.

Dell pulled off this hat trick by cutting costs. The company has slashed over 8,000 jobs so far this year and has implemented cost-cutting measures in its production model. Kinda nice to see a company making moves that are actually paying off.

Only a few months after the Microsoft-Yahoo debacle, Jerry Yang will be stepping down as CEO of Yahoo as soon as a replacement can be found. At that point, he will return to his previous role as “chief yahoo” for the company. Yahoo’s stock responded positively to the news.

Not surprising. Since Mr. Yang arrived at Yahoo, he has presided over a series of debacles. The 44 billion dollar takeover deal from Microsoft fell through, that partnership with Google failed, and his last ditch effort to make things right with Microsoft was completely unsuccessful.

If you have the skills to develop an application for iTunes, you should probably do it. Hey, you could lose your job at any second…the economy is falling apart… While everyone else is trying to save enough money to go to Burger King at the end of the week, you could be counting your hundreds of thousands just like Steve Demeter.

Steve Demeter’s Trism game only costs 5 bucks on iTunes. You can do it in your spare time (which some of you have quite a bit of), and it really won’t cost you a thing. Well…it helps to have an iPhone…

The latest victim of the economic turmoil is the tech sector. Companies like Sun Microsystems, Cisco, Intel, IBM, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard have already warned of lackluster sales in the coming months. And now it looks like layoffs are coming to the industry.

Today, Sun Microsystems announced plans to lay off up to 6,000 workers, or 18 percent of its workforce. The company is trying to increase productivity and save up to 800 million dollars a year. Hey…maybe they actually know what they’re doing over there: today, shares rose by 12.7 percent.

AT&T said today that it will drop $275 million on Wayport Inc., a privately held Texas company. Wayport already manages AT&T’s Wi-Fi network, but will now officially become part of the AT&T family. AT&T is interested in increasing its number of “hot spots” as more and more people buy Wi-Fi enabled gadgets like the iPhone and BlackBerry.

The Discovery Channel is airing a new weekly TV series from the producers of MythBusters, called Prototype This!

In the show, four tech specialists work together to solve prototyping product challenges. But the show faced challenges of its own when it started looking for encoders that were able to withstand a beating.

Only a few months ago, Yahoo! balked at a possible takeover by Microsoft for 33 dollars a share. Instead the company decided to join forces with Google in an advertising agreement that would bring new revenue to the struggling web company.

But today, Google announced that it has walked away from the advertising deal, leaving Yahoo! twisting in the wind. A lawsuit by federal anti-trust regulators brought the deal to a halt. Apparently, a partnership between the two search giants would virtually create a search monopoly.

Sony is feeling the pressure.

Contending with a cool rival like Apple is not easy: the iPhone, iPod, iMac, i-this, and i-that are highly integrated products that are useful, entertaining, and trends in their own right.

The company has laid down the law in terms of what consumers, shareholders and stockholders alike can expect from a 21st Century company: high growth, reliability, usability, innovation, profitability… the list goes on and on… and on.

Okay, okay… The English dictionary has been filled with a hundred-thousand new tech terms over the past decade, so what’s one more?

Most of us have used Bluetooth, WiFi, GSM, 3G, and so on… But if things go the way the FCC wants, many people will soon be able to connect to wireless broadband for free through an as-yet-unused technology called white space.