Microsoft’s latest attempt to purchase Yahoo is gaining momentum again. According to The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft is working with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm, to put together a bid to purchase Yahoo. Microsoft Bid for Yahoo Building Momentum [REPORT]. Very interesting!  Whether or not they they will roll up their email systems remains to be...

A widespread service outage wouldn’t bode well for any service provider, but it has got to sting a little extra for RIM. This isn’t the first time that there has been a BlackBerry service outage in North America. To boot, with the iPhone 4S, a huge competitor for everyone, but specifically the flailing, increasingly aimless BlackBerry, this outage could hardly come at a worse time, especially when more and more businesses are abandoning RIM’s proprietary, secure email for alternatives that let employees use phones like the iPhone for work.  BlackBerry Black Out Spreads To North America | Geekosystem. Oh RIM…how much longer will you be able to hold on? It’s one thing to keep releasing products to “compete” with Apple and Android…and quite another to research and develop other sorts of technology you can lead in…perhaps you should do the...

 The Internet movie-rental company said it was abandoning a plan to split its DVD-by-mail service into a separate business named Qwikster, originally hatched so it could focus on its online video-streaming service. Customers had howled about that plan, which promised to heap inconvenience on top of a previously announced 60% price increase. Between the two moves, subscribers were livid, and a customer exodus was driving down Netflix shares. Netflix Abandons Qwikster Plans –...

Let’s address this up front: Gizmodo and Steve Jobs had, at best, a tumultuous relationship. Yet no matter how much he may have hated us, we admired him. No, that’s not quite right. We loved him. He was the reason many of us got into this industry, or even care about technology at all. He made the computer personal, and the smartphone fun. Bill Gates may have put a computer on every office desk, but it was Steve Jobs who put one in every dorm room and bedroom and living room. And then, years later, he repeated the trick, putting one in every bag and every pocket, thanks to the iPad and iPhone. If you use a computer or smartphone today, it is either one he created, or an imitation of his genius… Steve Jobs Is Dead. No matter what, he was a Titan for...

        The reason they cite is for the purpose of tracking 911 calls. Whether or not that’s just a smokescreen depends on your personal level of paranoia and frequency of illegal activites. Currently, if a non-GPS enabled phone dials 911, the provider has to triangulate the location, which is annoying and inefficient, apparently. Straight up GPS is just much better for figuring out exactly where you are, however that makes you feel. FCC Rules All Cellphones Must Have GPS by 2018 | Geekosystem. While everyone is worried about Facebook, the government is making everyone easier to track. Wonder how long it will take for this to be on...

  It’s official, Verizon is teaming up with Microsoft to provide live TV on the Xbox, a first for the console. The rumors were accurate. It appears that the service will work like this: Verizon FIOS TV and Internet subscribers who have Xbox Live will be able to download a Verizon app designed specifically for the Xbox. Yes, it has Kinect functionality. The app will provide users with as-yet-ill-defined “collection” of content in HD right through their Xboxes. Verizon Partnering With Microsoft, Live TV on the Xbox 360 | Geekosystem. If this works like the ESPN3 setup (only needing a Verizon internet service provider) this is all kinds of win. If you still need FIOS Internet AND TV, it’s just another box to route things through. Time will...

Although a federal judge has refused to grant a temporary restraining order on Facebook at the request of Timelines.com, a small Chicago company that claimsFacebook’s new Timeline feature threatens its business, Facebook has promised to delay a full launch. Facebook Timeline, a feature that reorganizes users’ profiles into multimedia-rich scrapbooks of past updates, has been expected to go live any day. Some 1.1 million users havealready installed the feature on their profiles by enabling developer access. The judge in Timelines.com’s patent lawsuit declined the site’s request to disable users from signing on through the developer program. He did, however, order Facebook to report daily how many new developers were enabling the Timeline. Facebook Timeline Launch Delayed in Federal Court...