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Morning Xtra: YouTube XL Arrives, Apple's Half-Billion Dollar Store

by Chad Mumm on June 3, 2009 at 11:54 AM



Apple Does $440 Million a Year at New York Store
Just to confirm, we are in a recession, right? Because, apparently, nobody told Apple. According to independent investigations by the New York Post, Apple's flagship retail store on Fifth Avenue in New York City is averaging $440 million in sales a year. Sure the underground store is open 24 hours a day, has a giant glass cube for roof, and sits in front of the famed FAO Schwartz toy store, but still... Half a billion dollars from one store is downright insane. [From: The New York Post, via CNET]

Google Is Watching You Online
Who's watching you the most online? Turns out, it's Google. A new study by graduate students from the University of California at Berkeley found that Google is tracking surfers on 92 of the Internet's top 100 sites. What is it watching for? Well, most of the tracking is done by either Google Analytics (a free statistics product used by many third-party sites to analyze their Web traffic) and DoubleClick (Google's advertising section). Of course, Google promises not to "be evil" with all this info, which is all well and good when the company is doing well -- as it is now -- but it remains to be seen how this policy will fare in more trying financial times. [From: NY Times]

YouTube Launches New TV-Style Browser
For all you Web video lovers out there, YouTube has just launched a new version of its site called YouTube XL. It's basically just a big-buttoned, simpler interface for accessing those same old videos of dogs skateboarding, but it does make the YouTube experience much easier to navigate on your television. Don't take our word for it; check it out for yourself. [From: Download Squad]

Justice Department Begins Tech Antitrust Probe
We've gotten word from the Washington Post that the U.S. Justice Department is probing some of the world's largest tech companies to see if they've been violating antitrust laws in their hiring policies in order to give themselves unfair advantages. Some of the companies named in the investigation are Google, Apple, Yahoo, and Genentech. We're sure Microsoft is in there, too, although it wasn't named. [From: Washington Post]

New DARPA Project to Help Build Itself
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is known for being on the bleeding edge of technology, but its latest project seems more like science fiction than reality. Apparently, the agency is developing artificial intelligence (AI) systems that can aid in their own construction. Many a movie has been made about machines that get too smart for their (or our) own good and start blowing stuff up, so we're hoping DARPA doesn't forget the 'off' switch. [From: The Register]

Tags: morningxtra, top

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