Cisco Buys Pure Digital

It is official: Tech giant Cisco has announced its intentions to acquire Flip Video maker, Pure Digital. And get this – that half a billion figure rumor circulating the Web earlier this month was a tad low. Cisco will shell out $590 million in stock to nab the makers of the immensely popular video cam. The “acquisition of Pure Digital is key to Cisco’s strategy to expand our momentum in the media-enabled home and to capture the consumer market transition to visual networking,’’ Cisco’s senior VP of Corporate Development and Consumer Groups, Ned Hooper explained. Yeah, we’d agree buying up Pure Digital is a momentum expanding move – but in a direction not normally explored by Cisco.

Twitter Hoax Tricks Sleep-Deprived Tweeple

Did you believe the news Twitter would start charging rates for its internet text service? Well, you weren’t alone in falling for humor site, BBSpot.com’s satirical post about Twitter’s new premium accounts – not that we’re condoning your gullibility. Brian Briggs, the blog’s author, posted an entry at midnight today poking fun at Twitter’s much-discussed business model dilemma. The site, which posts 140 character status updates in real time, has had a tough time figuring out how to make money, despite its rampant popularity. Briggs wrote that Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams announced Twitter users would be charged according to the ‘premium’ subscription they chose. Aside from the “news” breaking on an obscure blog at an odd time, guidelines for said subscriptions should have been the easy give away that this whole scheme was a hoax.

Here are the details:

Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 8

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer will jump back in to the browser race today. Microsoft announced its finalized version of its Internet Explorer 8 will launch at noon. It’s much needed upgrade comes at after months of next generation releases from IE’s competitors. Apple released Safari 4 last month, Mozilla released Firefox 3 in June of last year, Opera unveiled it’s 9.6 browser in October of last year and Google launched its Chrome browser in December of last year. Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft says that security is major focus in IE 8. Like its competitors, Internet Explorer 8 has been working to build a lot of protection into the browser itself rather than forcing users to rely on antivirus, antimalware and firewall programs.