Visit our Filed page for categories. To browse by specific topic, see our Inside page. For a list of companies covered on this site, visit our Companies page.
By Julie Johnsson | American Airlines is overhauling the way its passengers check in for
international flights, allowing wired travelers to potentially avoid
lengthy lines in its airport lobbies.
Effective April 14, American’s passengers will be able to check in
online for overseas travel, printing boarding passes at home or at
airport kiosks or downloading the passes to mobile phones.
Read the full story: American starts online check-in for international flights.
From Crain’s Chicago Business | McDonald’s has hired a director of social media as part of an effort to boost its social media efforts in the U.S. Rick Wion, the new director, was involved in establishing the McDonald’s Twitter handle, @mcdonalds, and creating the process for responding to customer complaints.
Get the full story: chicagobusiness.com.
Dow Jones Newswires-Wall Street Journal | Twitter Inc. will
start rolling out advertising to users Tuesday, the four-year-old
company’s first significant attempt to turn its microblogging service
into a profitable business.
The company plans to announce a new service called Promoted Tweets, a
Twitter spokesman said. The ads will appear at the top of search
results for searches users conduct on Twitter, a model similar to
Google Inc.’s wildly successful search advertising system. Over time,
they may appear in the stream of posts users see when they log into the
site.
Associated Press | Microsoft Corp. unveiled two phones Monday
that are meant for social networking-savvy teens and twenty-somethings,
in an attempt to revitalize its mobile business and regain ground on
iPhones and BlackBerrys.
Microsoft said its new touch-screen phones – a short, square-shaped
handset called Kin 1 and a longer, more rectangular one called Kin 2 –
will be sold exclusively in the U.S. by Verizon Wireless. They are
being made by Sharp Corp., which has produced Sidekick cell phones,
whose software comes from Microsoft-owned Danger Inc.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs announces the new iPhone OS4 software during an Apple special event in Cupertino, Calif. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Associated Press | Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPad devices will soon be able to run more than
one program at a time, an ability that phones from Apple’s rivals
already offer and that iPhone owners have long sought.
The changes, coming this summer to iPhones and this fall to iPads, mean
that users might be able to listen to music through the Pandora program
and check a bank account online simultaneously. Currently, users must
return to Apple’s home screen, effectively quitting the open program,
before starting a new task.
(AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
Dow Jones Newswires | It costs Apple Inc. $259.60 to manufacture its iPad tablet computer, according to iSuppli Corp.’s tear-down analysis, reported on by Bloomberg News Wednesday.
The market-research firm’s analysis indicates that components of the lowest-priced, 16-gigabyte iPad amount to 52% of its retail price of $499. A high-end 64-gigabyte version of the iPad, which retails for $699, contains components that cost $348.10, according to iSuppli.
Dow Jones Newswires | There were 21 percent more Americans with
smartphones in the three months ended February than the prior quarter,
according to new findings from researcher comScore Inc.
The company also said Motorola Inc. continues to have more U.S.
subscribers using its handsets than any other company. That is one bit
of good news for the company, in what has been several years of
struggling sales amid a dearth of hot products.
Tribune staff report | Apple said Monday it sold more than 300,000 iPads on its opening day,
meeting the expectations of some analysts while underscoring the
challenges the company still faces marketing the much-anticipated
device beyond early adopters.
The figures, which included pre-orders that were picked up or delivered
Saturday, were hardly exceptional despite weeks of hype about the
revolutionary nature of a new class of device that falls somewhere
between the phone and computer.
Julieta Pessah walks out of the Michigan Avenue Apple store Saturday morning after purchasing two new iPads. She said she flew from Mexico City just to buy the new device. (Abel Uribe/ Chicago Tribune)
By Wailin Wong | The rain didn’t stop several hundred Apple enthusiasts from lining up outside the North Michigan Avenue store on Saturday morning to get first crack at the company’s new iPad tablet.
“It’s honestly a unique company,” said Siamak Saidi, 31, who also stood in line to get the iPhone when it debuted. “Everything is as perfect as it can be from a design perspective.”
Saidi already owns an iMac, Macbook Pro laptop, and iPod Nano in addition to his iPhone. He said he plans to use his iPad to download photos and wach videos — “highlights and the best of my computer” without lugging the extra weight, he explained.
By Gail MarksJarvis | Are you among the many angry Americans who think government is out of control and wasting your tax money? You can get insight into the billions of tax money spent on recent pet projects through this earmark spotting tool. Play with it to see how the U.S. Senate and House spent your tax money in your state.
Get the full story: MarksJarvis on Money.
From Denver Business Journal | United Airlines, which began offering Wi-Fi on a select group of transcontinental flights in October, plans to start adding Wi-Fi access in late 2010 beyond just the 13 New York-to-California flights on which it’s now offered.
Get the full story: denver.bizjournals.com.
Dow Jones Newswires | A federal appeals court on Thursday
rejected Microsoft Corp.’s request to review a $290 million patent
ruling involving the software maker’s popular word processing program.
Microsoft had asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
for a review by its full roster of judges. In December, a three-judge
panel from that court had upheld a lower court ruling that Microsoft
infringed on patents held by i4i Inc., a Canadian software company.
A shopper trying on a hat and sunglasses at Claire’s in Old Orchard Mall. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
By Julie Wernau | Claire’s Stores Inc., the fashion accessory retailer behind the Claire’s
and Icing brands, reported modest growth in the fourth quarter and said
it plans to double capital expenditures in 2010 as it attempts to
rebrand and expand into new markets.
The Hoffman Estates-based company reported sales of $410.7 million for
the 2009 fourth quarter, an increase of $17.7 million over the previous
year that was primarily due to a foreign currency translation
effect. Same-store sales were up 2.1 percent in the fourth quarter, with
European stores faring better than those in North America. The company
said winter and holiday items were popular buys.
From the Wall Street Journal | After being on of the first to spend a week with Apple’s new iPad, Wall Street Journal’s veteran technology columnist Walter Mossberg says it has the potential to change portable computing, challenge the primacy of the laptop and possibly killing the mouse interface we’ve known for decades.
Get the full story: wsj.com.
From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer | Nonprofit group Greenpeace criticized data centers run by tech giants like Microsoft and Google on Wednesday, saying that their centers consume too much electricity. At Microsoft’s new Chicago data center, 72.8 percent of power was generated by coal, and 22.3 percent was nuclear, according to Greenpeace.
Get the full story: seattlepi.com.
