Broadband companies shift to usage-based plans; Best Buy founder considers a buyout.
Sweeping effects as broadband moves to meters [THE NEW YORK TIMES]
Here in South Texas, Time Warner Cable customers have been given the online equivalent of a scale in the bathroom, a “usage tracker” that adds up all the household’s Facebooking and YouTubing. Customers who sign up for a light plan of 5 gigabytes of broadband — that’s the equivalent of two high-definition movie downloads — are rewarded with a $5 discount each month if they don’t go over. If they do, they pay $1 for every additional gigabyte.
The many sides of Jack Dorsey [WIRED]
In addition to his full-time job as CEO and unofficial chief design officer of Square — one of the Valley’s hottest startups, which recently sought a valuation of $4 billion — he also serves as executive chair of Twitter, which launched in 2006 by springboarding off his idea that brief sneezes of communication could deepen human interaction. As the driving force behind the two startup darlings—and as a man who is often mentioned as the spiritual successor to Steve Jobs — Dorsey is in major demand by media bookers, angel investment prospects, and event organizers seeking edgy marquee names to engrave on trophies. (One recent honor: a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Tribeca Film Festival.)
Zynga gets physical [FORTUNE]
The San Francisco-based company has begun signing offline branding deals with everything from toy-makers to apparel retailers to television studios. It’s unclear if the company hopes such efforts will generate significant revenue, but it certainly believes that its brands can have life beyond desktops and mobile devices.
On Orbitz, Mac users steered to pricier hotels [THE WALL STREET JOURNAL]
Orbitz Worldwide Inc has found that people who use Apple Inc.’s Mac computers spend as much as 30% more a night on hotels, so the online travel agency is starting to show them different, and sometimes costlier, travel options than Windows visitors see.
McAfee discovers $78 million worth of sophisticated cyber attacks against banking systems [THE VERGE]
Using a series of highly sophisticated cyber attacks to target high balance accounts, criminals have been able to successfully bypass physical “chip and pin” authentication and use server-based fraudulent transactions to steal money from a number of accounts in Europe. The attacks originated in Italy, using SpyEye and Zeus malware to transfer funds into fraudulent accounts.
Winamp’s woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself [ARS TECHNICA]
“There’s no reason that Winamp couldn’t be in the position that iTunes is in today if not for a few layers of mismanagement by AOL that started immediately upon acquisition,” Rob Lord, the first general manager of Winamp, and its first-ever hire, told Ars.
