AOL: You Can Call it a Comeback

AOL: You Can Call it a Comeback | NBC Bay Area: "Who'd a thunk it? AOL is doing some pretty cool stuff. Yes, AOL. The company showed off new initiatives to reporters in a casual briefing Thursday night and while I can't speak for others, I walked away impressed.

The new AOL is much different than the old America Online, a company famous for the squeak of dialup modems and 'You've got mail!'

The first fix? Move some of the best minds away from the company's headquarters in old fashioned Virginia and to the hip and happening Palo Alto. Hire Stanford grads (lots of Stanford grads).

In fact, AOL's west coast offices offer no-strings-attached incubator space to Stanford students with the hopes the young computer scientists will stick around and take jobs at AOL. Even if they don't, they fill the offices with the young 'can do' attitude that an old-media company so desperately needs. The new west coast offices, with bright colors and snarky signs feels -- dare I say it -- Googley.

AOL is working on a number of new projects, one of which is predictably code named Phoenix - rising from the ashes and all that.

'We no longer say 'turnaround'' says West Coast head Brad Garlinghouse. 'We've already turned the company around. Now we're concentrating on comeback.'

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

10 Androids That Outmuscle the iPhone

10 Androids That Outmuscle the iPhone - Yahoo! Shopping: "Apple's iPhone had a good run atop the smartphone league, but 10 Google Androids aim to bury the tuckered-out leader this year.

Motorola Mobility, Samsung, HTC and LG have promised to deliver supercharged, ultra-thin, 4G Android devices in the coming weeks and months.

But not always. Before the mobile phone industry got all busy with design makeovers and tummy tucks, there were -- and still are -- some delightfully hideous phones that represented the other side of the beauty trend. The Street has gone back through the past decade to dig up some of the best examples of designs that make you wince and stare in disbelief. The clueless stylings, the flights of fancy into odd shapes, the obsession with square versus rounded -- it is a wonderfully colorful history.

The giant Android attack features bigger screens, better cameras, faster processors and speedier 4G connections than the upcoming iPhone.

The Android's phone screens, for example, start at 4 inches and go to 4.5 inches, advancing the size standard for this generation of touchscreens. By comparison, Apple's next iPhone is expected to have a 3.5-inch screen.

The new Androids are 4G phones either on AT&T HSDPA-Plus network or Verizon's LTE network, and four of the 10 will come with dual core processors.

Apple, on the other hand, is expected to upgrade to a dual-core processor this year, but the 4G LTE iPhone has been delayed to 2012, as first reported.

The presumed delay of the next iPhone from June to September, and the decision to wait a year on 4G LTE upgrade highlight just a few of the areas where Apple has been lagging behind the leaders in the Android pack.

'The processor and display quality improvement in the Android camp is proceeding at such a clip that Apple will be under a lot of pressure to deliver a substantial jump in iPhone specs next autumn,' MKM Partners' analyst Tero Kuittinen.

'It's not clear how Apple can battle the rapid Android evolution,' says Kuittinen, 'unless it picks up the pace of its iPhone launches.'

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

SHOW #108 - NerdBoyTV: RoyceWare

In this episode of NerdBoyTV, Ryan Yee interviews Cynthia Mace, owner and jewelry designer of RoyceWare. She has six different collections, including Divine Protection (stylish, stunning dog tags), Twin Jewels, and PetWare. Go to http://RoyceWare.com