10,000 employees switching to Mac

FORTUNE: Apple 2.0 Axel Springer’s 10,000 employees switching to Mac

Axel Springer AG, one of Europe’s largest newspaper publishers, with 10,000 employees and more than 150 papers in 30 countries, including its flagship Die Welt, announced on Friday that it is switching its entire operation from PCs to Macs.

In a YouTube video, posted below the fold, CEO Mathias Döpfner lists four reasons for the change:

Most of the company’s layout work was already being done on Macs
Macs are more user friendly than other computers
Apple creates the most elegant computers
Macs are cheaper to buy and easier to maintain than they were in the past
The changeover will take five years and when complete, according to Döpfner, will make Axel Springer (SPR.F) Apple’s (AAPL) second largest corporate customer, after Google (GOOG).

(Via fortune )

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Hancock & Wanted

Movie day consisted of two movies:

Hancock – it was ok..interesting premise but it didn’t deliver. 3 out of 5
Wanted – a lot of hype and I couldn’t see why. 2 1/2 out of 5.

 

What did you think?

Judge rules, YouTube user data must be turned over to Viacom

YouTube user data must be turned over to Viacom, judge rules

A federal judge this week ordered Google to provide Viacom with records of which users watched which videos on YouTube. The ruling raises fears that the video viewing histories of tens of millions of people could be exposed. The sheer amount of data we’re talking about here is massive — for each and every YouTube video ever watched since YouTube launched in 2005, Google now has to to turn over to Viacom the login name of every user who had watched every video, and their the IP addresses.

Snip from NYT story by Miguel Helft:

Google and Viacom said they were hoping to come up with a way to protect the anonymity of the site’s visitors. Viacom also said that the information would be safeguarded by a protective order restricting access to the data to outside lawyers, who will use it solely to press Viacom’s $1 billion copyright suit against Google.

Still, the judge’s order, which was made public late Wednesday, renewed concerns among privacy advocates that Internet companies like Google are collecting unprecedented amounts of private information that could be misused or fall unexpectedly into the hands of third parties.

“These very large databases of transactional information become honey pots for law enforcement or for litigants,” said Chris Hoofnagle, a senior fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.

Google Told to Turn Over User Data of YouTube [New York Times]

(Via Boing Boing)

iTunes’ Rivals Are Worth a Look

iTunes’ Rivals Are Worth a Look
If there were a reason to keep using Apple’s iTunes Store exclusively to buy music online, it escapes me. Do you buy CDs only from your neighborhood record store? Not unless your best pal owns the store. In the world of physical music sales — yes, CDs still exist — there is little reason to spend $14 for an album while another retailer offers it for $10. We shop around for price. So why spend more at an online store when a virtual competitor is a mouse click away? Moreover, why shop for music at a place where you can play that purchase on only one company’s line of digital music devices?

Check out Amazon, Rhapsody or ,dare I say it,…Napster.

(Via MacNewsWorld)