Wednesday, March 14

A coalition of companies including AOL Time Warner, AT&T, IBM, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems are opposing Internet privacy legislation.

Imagine buying a calling card and having a cell phone thrown in with it. Dave Wilson of the LA Times gives paper cell phones a test-run.

EarthLink is raising DSL rates by $10/month for new customers. Rates for existing customers will increase when their existing contracts expire.

Intel released the specs for version 2.0 of USB (which the Devil's Dictionary defines as Unpredictable Serial Bus). The new iteration is backwards-compatible with USB 1.1, but offers speeds of 480 Megabits/sec, compared to 12 Megabits/sec for USB 1.1.

Iridium is back in the news and not because it's crashing through the roof of your hen house. Iridium Satellite, the group that bought the bankrupt satellite network, is ready to sell phones and service again. Phones will sell for $1,000 and air time for $1.50/minute, which is significantly less than the original Iridium pricing. Iridium Satellite is focusing its sales efforts in vertical markets where cellular coverage isn't available.

There's now a DirecPC satellite modem that's Linux-compatible.

Excite's Freelane is the latest free ISP to shut down .

Bring out ya dead!

CNET reports that Cisco is laying off 8,000 employees .

ZDNet reports that Motorola is laying off 7,000 employees.

Upside reports that CNET is laying off 200 employees, many from the newly-acquired ZDNet division. .

Yahoo! reports that Egghead is laying off 77 employees.

Upside reports that Yahoo! is laying off its CEO.

Business 2.0 reports that Buy.com is laying off half of its employees, plus its CEO and CFO. Beat that!

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