Daily Marauder

TECHNOLOGY

After a lull around Thanksgiving, December has seen some of the biggest layoffs in the tech industry yet since the economy entered its tailspin in the fall. Our Layoff Tracker is now past 100,000 lost jobs (109,629, as of this writing) across nearly 300 different technology and media companies both large and small. To put this in perspective, Citigroup alone announced 52,000 layoffs in November, and across the U.S. economy, just counting September and October, there were nearly 500,000 unemployment claims as a result of mass layoffs (data isn’t in yet for November or December). (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/12/tech-layoffs-surge-past-100000 12/12)

In a promotion with RadioShack, AT&T has created what is said to be the first known bundling of wireless-broadband service offered in the U.S. with netbooks, the budget notebooks geared largely for Web browsing. The consumer-electronics retailer is offering customers a $99.99 Acer Aspire One netbook if they agree to a two-year AT&T DataConnect mobile-broadband contract for at least $60 a month. Telephony Online (12/12)

Comcast announced it is rolling out it’s DOCSIS 3.0-powered “wideband” service in Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore and Ft. Wayne, Indiana in the coming weeks. The service, capable of hitting 50Mbps down and 5Mbps upstream, is now available to about 10 million homes and businesses including areas of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Oregon, Washington and New England. (Cynopsis 12/15)

With no time to waste before the end of the holiday shopping season, lucky reporters from The Boston Globe sat down to sample some of the best HDTVs that are popping up on Santa’s wish list this year. The paper field-tested the 50-inch Pioneer Elite Kuro, the 46-inch Sony Bravia XBR 6 and the 65-inch Bang and Olufsen BeoVision 4. The Boston Globe (12/14)

Singapore-based Shiro has launched the SQ-S, a media player that can be recharged by the sun. The solar-powered unit, which also can be recharged via USB port, has as much as 16 GB of capacity and an expected battery life of 35 hours. Pocket-lint.co.uk (12/12)

Digeo is shipping a limited number of its new Moxi HD digital video recorder. The device, with a 500GB hard drive and CableCard support, links TVs, personal computers and the Internet through the Moxi menu. ElectronicHouse.com (12/12)

Establishing a path to connect the bandwidth-intensive multimedia devices that will be available in the future, the International Telecommunication Union has accepted a global standard for power, coaxial cable, phone and other home-network wiring. The standard, which will enable things such as room-to-room HDTV, will help build transceivers that likely will be incorporated into devices by 2010. iTWire (Australia) (12/15) , Cartt News Service (subscription only) (12/13) , EE Times (12/12)