苹果联合创始人牛排大餐悼念乔布斯

    10月初，整个世界都在深切哀悼史蒂夫•乔布斯辞世。就在这个当口上，苹果公司（Apple）另一位创始人史蒂夫•沃兹尼亚克在Twitter上发消息称，尽管听到这个“令人不安的消息”，但他还是不想改变计划，仍将赶赴澳美客牛排店（Outback Steakhouse），与家人共进晚餐。

    这条Twitter消息实际上是从他在地理定位社交网站Foursquare上的账号上发出的，那么，这次登陆至少让沃兹尼亚克赚得了一些积分。——戴维•古德曼

Woz mourns at Outback Steakhouse

    As the world weighed in with thoughtful reactions to Steve Jobs' death in early October, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak issued a tweet saying that despite the "disturbing news," he was keeping his plans for a family dinner at Outback Steakhouse.

    The tweet was actually sent from his Foursquare account, so at least Woz earned a point for the check-in. -- David Goldman

TechCrunch、美国在线短暂联姻闹剧收场

    当初科技博客TechCrunch创始人迈克尔•阿灵顿将网站出售给美国在线公司（AOL）时，业界就没人指望这段“姻缘”能有个美满的结局。果不其然，恰好在一年之后，这笔当时震撼业界的交易就触礁了。

    阿灵顿宣布，他打算推出一个名为Crunchfund的风投基金，它价值2,000万美元。《纽约时报》（New York Times）发表评论称，这是一个“荒唐可笑的越界行为”。阿灵顿同时运行着最举足轻重的创业新闻网站和一只以初创企业为投资对象的基金，这给整个业界敲响了警钟。

    尽管美国在线公司CEO蒂姆•阿姆斯特朗批准了这项安排（他称TechCrunch是一个具有“不同标准”的网站），但该公司评论部主管阿里安娜•赫芬顿却并不买账，她说阿灵顿并不是美国在线公司评论部的一员。她建议，如果他想继续写的话，他可以做一位无偿写作的博客。

    赫芬顿的挑战引发了一个长达一周的闹剧：阿灵顿最初试图保住他作为TechCrunch主编的身份，随后又提议从美国在线公司回购TechCrunch，但他最终以辞职收场。阿灵顿的离去导致TechCrunch网站一批最有名的作者纷纷出走，美国在线公司赢得了一场代价惨痛的胜利。——史黛西•考莉

L'affair Arrington

    When TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington shocked the industry by selling his site to AOL, no one expected the matchup to end well. Exactly one year later, it imploded.

    In a move that the New York Times called "almost comically over the line," Arrington announced plans to launch a $20 million venture capital fund called Crunchfund. The idea of Arrington running both the most influential news site covering startups and a fund investing in those same startups set off alarm bells.

    While AOL CEO Tim Armstrong approved the arrangement (he called TechCrunch a site with "different standards"), AOL editorial head Arianna Huffington kiboshed it, proclaiming that Arrington was off AOL's editorial payroll. If he wanted to keep writing, he could do so as an unpaid blogger, she suggested.

    Huffington's gauntlet throw sparked a weeklong soap opera as Arrington first tried to preserve his TechCrunch editorship, then offered to buy TechCrunch back from AOL, and finally resigned. His departure sparked an exodus of TechCrunch's best-known writers, leaving AOL with a Pyrrhic victory.-- Stacy Cowley

亏损大户Demand Media重启科技股上市热潮

    Demand Media公司（Demand Media）CEO理查德•罗森布拉特这些年一直对媒体信誓旦旦地表示，他的网络内容公司是盈利的。但Demand Media随后在申请首次公开募股（IPO）时，却暴露出了一段漫长的亏损史。

    1月份，Demand Media在披露上一财年出现5,300万美元净亏损（销售额为1.98亿美元）之后没多久，就公开上市。对于这些损失，投资者不以为然：该公司股价上涨了33%。首个交易日临近结束时，该公司的市值达到了15亿美元，比《纽约时报》还要高。

    随后，华尔街对于DemandM edia公司的热情逐渐冷却了下来，该公司股价在今年下跌了65%。但Demand Media的上市却为另一轮技术类公司上市热潮铺平了道路。一批盈利水平不稳定、甚或根本就没有赚过钱的公司，争相跃入公开市场。

    Groupon公司，我们在说你呢。——朱利安•波比顿

Demand Media starts string of dicey IPOs

    Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt spent years telling media outlets that his online content company was profitable. Then it filed for an IPO and revealed a long history of red ink.

    Demand went public in January right after disclosing a net loss of $53 million in its previous fiscal year, on sales of $198 million. Investors shrugged off those losses: Demand's stock rose 33%. By the end of the first day of trading, the company was valued at $1.5 billion -- more than the New York Times.

    Wall Street later cooled on Demand Media, and the company's shares have dropped 65% this year. But Demand's debut paved the way for a tech IPO resurgence, allowing a roster of companies with a shaky or nonexistent history of actually making money to make the leap onto the public markets.

    We're looking at you, Groupon. -- Julianne Pepitone

索尼惨遭黑客帽子戏法羞辱

    2011年的春天对于索尼公司（Sony）来说犹如梦魇一般——该公司运行的3个独立游戏系统先后都遭到了大规模的黑客攻击。

    4月22日，索尼披露了第一起黑客攻击事件：一个“外部入侵”攻破了它的PlayStation网络和流媒体服务网站Qriocity。一周后，索尼公司承认用户的个人信息（或许还包括信用卡账号）已经被盗。多达7,700万用户的敏感信息危在旦夕。

    5月2日，又传来一个更糟糕的消息。索尼公司的另一个部门索尼在线娱乐（Sony Online Entertainment）透露称黑客已进入了用户信息库，并随即切断了网络服务。黑客们或许还从一个源自2007年的过时数据库中获得了国际用户的财务信息。

    索尼的麻烦并没有因黑客“帽子戏法”的结束而终结。6月份，黑客组织Lulz Security在网上发布了一些零散的数据，称这些数据正是它在侵入索尼网站之后，从100多万个用户账号中获取的。Lulz Security还表示，索尼公司以纯文本形式保存了100多万位用户的密码，而且没有对其进行加密，这一切都是该公司“自找的”。这份声明无疑在索尼的伤口上又撒了一把盐。——朱利安•波比顿

Sony gets hacked -- again and again

    Spring 2011 was a nightmarish time for Sony as it struggled to recover from massive hack attacks on three separate gaming systems it runs.

    Sony disclosed the first hack on April 22, saying that an "external intrusion" had breached its PlayStation Network and its media streaming service Qriocity. A week later, Sony admitted that personal information and maybe credit card numbers had been stolen. Sensitive details for a whopping 77 million customers were at risk.

    On May 2, things got worse. Another division, Sony Online Entertainment, took its Web services offline after revealing that hackers gained access to its databases of subscriber information. Hackers may have also obtained financial information for international users from an outdated database from 2007.

    The hack hat trick didn't end Sony's problems. In June, hacker group Lulz Security posted online snippets of data it said came from a breach of more than 1 million user accounts on Sony's website. Lulz's statement twisted the knife, saying Sony was "asking for it" by storing more than 1 million user passwords in plain text instead of encrypting them. -- Julianne Pepitone

惯犯Facebook诽谤谷歌侵犯隐私

    Facebook公司今年出现了一长串失误，但在公关领域的惨败或许是该公司最大的败笔。5月份，这家社交网络雇佣了行事激进的博雅公关公司（Burson-Marsteller），散播关于谷歌公司（Google）的负面新闻。具体来说，Facebook希望传播谷歌公司侵犯用户隐私的事件——这种事Facebook自己就是个中老手。

    这是一场经典的抹黑运动，记者丹•里昂斯率先报道了此事。事件曝光后，Facebook承认，它的确雇佣了博雅公司来宣传谷歌在其不事张扬的“社交圈子（Social Circles）”功能中使用个人数据的行为，但Facebook声称它对这种行为的担忧合情合理（一个月后，这个功能正式成为了谷歌的一部分，这不啻为对Facebook的正面回击）。

    最终，Facebook并没有坦白事情的真相——它这样做是为了抹黑其最大的竞争对手，但似乎没有人特别在意谷歌涉嫌侵犯隐私的行为。这次草率马虎的打击行动，反倒让Facebook颜面扫地。——丹尼尔•罗伯茨

Facebook smears Google's privacy policy

    This year's PR fiasco ranks near the top of Facebook's long list of missteps. In May, the social network hired aggressive PR firm Burson-Marsteller to plant negative pieces about Google. Specifically, Facebook wanted to seed stories about Google invading its users' privacy -- something Facebook has plenty of experience with itself.

    It was a classic smear campaign, and reporter Dan Lyons blew the whistle on it. Dragged into the light, Facebook admitted hiring Burson to publicize what it claimed were its very legitimate concerns about Google's use of personal data in its under-the-radar "Social Circles" feature. (One month later, that feature became part of Google , the company's frontal assault on Facebook.)

    In the end, Facebook didn't own up to the real story -- that it attempted to play dirty with its biggest competitor -- and no one much cared about Google's alleged privacy violations. The story instead became Facebook's sloppy, shady hit job. -- Daniel Roberts

巴诺书店竞争失利拿书商撒气

    为了给新推出的Kindle Fire平板电脑造势，亚马逊公司（Amazon）达成了一笔甜蜜的交易：获得了DC Comics公司100种漫画的独家数字版权。此举惹恼了巴诺书店（Barnes Noble）——因为这将对该公司的Nook Color平板电脑构成严重的威胁。

    于是，盛怒之下的巴诺书店做出了一个孩子气十足的反应：它从其书店的书架上全面撤下了这100种漫画。

    该公司首席销售官宣称：“倘若不给我们提供现有的数字格式，我们的书店就不会销售相应的实体书。” 漫画业博客Bleeding Cool怒斥此举堪称“焦土政策”。讽刺的是，巴诺书店此前一度大举扩充漫画书籍，宣称要成为“漫画爱好者的终极目的地”，然而短短几个月之后就发生了下架事件。——史黛西•考莉

Barnes & Noble throws tantrum

    To launch its new Kindle Fire tablet, Amazon scored a sweet deal: Exclusive digital rights to 100 DC Comics titles. That annoyed Barnes & Noble, which sells its own rival Nook Color tablet.

    So it responded like a toddler in a huff: It yanked copies of all 100 titles off its bookstore shelves.

    "We will not stock physical books in our stores if we are not offered the available digital format," the company's chief merchant announced. The move, which comics industry blog Bleeding Cool denounced as a "scorched-earth policy," came just months after Barnes & Noble significantly expanded its comics selection and touted its plans to become "THE destination for comics lovers." -- Stacy Cowley

Twitter Dickbar先天不足成笑柄

    还记得Twitter的Dickbar吗？别搞错了，我们说的不是众议员安东尼•韦纳（指韦纳在Twitter上向女性网友发送个人色情照片的丑闻——译注）在社交媒体上的不幸遭遇。

    作为迈向盈利的步骤之一，Twitter为其iPhone应用增添了一个“快速栏（Quickbar）”，在这项应用的顶部插入试图推广的Twitter消息和流行主题。问题是：这个快速栏实际上遮住了部分信息流。用户们非常讨厌这个设计不佳的快速栏，并给它起了一个绰号Dickbar，用以嘲讽Twitter公司CEO迪克•科斯特洛。

    Twitter最初尝试着改进这个功能，但是后来，创始人之一杰克•多尔西重掌Twitter产品研发事务，此后没几天，Twitter就彻底放弃了这项功能。许许多多Twitter用户都打趣道：“叮咚，# Dickbar挂了！”——劳瑞•西格尔

Twitter's ill-fated 'Dickbar'

    Remember Twitter's Dickbar? No, we're not talking about Anthony Weiner's social media misadventures.

    As part of its forays into moneymaking, Twitter added a "Quickbar" to its iPhone app, inserting promoted tweets and trending topics at the top of the app. One problem: The bar actually covered up part of the tweet stream. Users hated the poorly designed bar and nicknamed it the "Dickbar," in homage to Twitter CEO Dick Costolo.

    Twitter tried to fine-tune the feature, but finally killed it just days after co-founder Jack Dorsey returned to lead Twitter's product development. As many, many Twitter users quipped: "Ding dong, the #Dickbar's dead!" -- Laurie Segall

白宫首席经济学家增长承诺落空

    2月份，时任白宫首席经济学家奥斯坦•古尔斯比在参加电视节目“每日秀”（Daily Show）时，曾大胆地许下诺言：

    “我们已经拿到了预算，还成立了就业委员会。我来这里是想告诉大家：美国经济通过增长能够摆脱这些问题。”

    当然，预算问题“送到时已死亡”。就业委员会也在“战斗中失踪”。至于经济增长嘛，美国经济第二季度的增长率“高达”1.3% ，第三季度也“飙升”了2%。——莱克斯•哈里斯

Goolsbee: `We're gonna grow'

    When he was still a top economist in the White House in February, Austan Goolsbee went on the Daily Show and made a bold promise:

    "We got a budget and we got a jobs council. And that's what I've come down to tell you: We're gonna grow our way out of this thing, Jon."

    The budget, of course, was D.O.A. And the jobs council has been M.I.A. As for growth, the economy expanded by a whopping 1.3% in the second quarter, and just 2% in the third. -- Lex Haris

音乐网站Spotify引爆发烧友怒火

    今年夏天，音乐发烧友们迎来了一个令他们格外兴奋的好消息：期待已久的流媒体音乐网站Spotify终于在美国亮相了。

    但这份热情很快就转化为愤怒。Spotify公司在9月份宣布，所有的新用户必须通过Facebook登陆该网站，这意味着用户听到的每一首歌曲将自动在Facebook上播放。

    一位暴跳如雷的用户在Spotify博客上发表评论称：“伙计，我早上干活时只是登陆了一下Facebook，结果就碰到了我以前听到的每一首歌曲。太混账了！！”

    面对如此激烈的反应，Spotify迅速添加了一项“私下收听”功能，能够暂时停止共享。用户们也可以修改一下Spotify的设置，永久关闭共享功能。

    但是，请不要指望Facebook会在“一切都应该共享”这项原则上做出让步。创始人马克•扎克伯格在Facebook召开的F8会议上称，诸如Spotify这类应用程序是Facebook活动共享功能进行重大扩展的第一步。

    用扎克伯格的话说，下一步就是：“跑步、骑自行车、烹饪、吃饭、睡觉、幸福、时尚等等一切，都要共享。”——劳瑞•西格尔

Spotify broadcasts every song you fire up

    Music lovers celebrated this summer when streaming music service Spotify made its long-awaited U.S. debut.

    But hugs turned into hate when the company announced in September that all new users would be required to log into the service through Facebook -- and that by default, everything you listen to would be broadcast on Facebook.

    As one cranky user commented on Spotify's blog: "Oh man - i just logged on to facebook to be confronted with everything i had been listening to while i was working in the morning - total and utter bastards!!"

    Faced with a fiery backlash, Spotify quickly added a "private listening" feature that temporarily halts the sharing. Users can also muck around with Spotify's settings to permanently turn it off.

    But don't expect Facebook to back down on its "EVERYTHING should be shared" stance. At Facebook's F8 conference, founder Mark Zuckerberg called apps like Spotify the first step toward a major expansion of the site's activity sharing features.

    What's next? In Zuck's own words: " Your runs, your bike rides, your cooking and eating, your sleeping, your happiness, your fashion -- anything you want." -- Laurie Segall

马克•扎克伯格千万次道歉

    Facebook侵犯用户隐私的行为就像是“打地鼠”游戏，总是按下葫芦浮起瓢。

    11月份，Facebook与联邦贸易委员会（Federal Trade Commission）签署了一份和解协议，后者指控该公司存在一系列“不公平和欺骗性”行为。

    “我首先要承认我们的确犯了一大堆错误，”Facebook创始人马克•扎克伯格在一篇博客文章中对这份和解协议表态称。

    事实上，他已经一而再再而三地做出诸如此类的“坦白”。科技博客All Things D指出，扎克伯格过去几年在Facebook公司博客上发表了25篇博文，其中有10篇都是在道歉、解释，原因是网站的改动和错误行为惹恼了用户。——劳瑞•西格尔

Mark Zuckerberg is sorry ... again and again

    Facebook's privacy violations are like Whac-a-Mole: Every time you smack one down, another pops up.

    In November, Facebook signed a settlement deal with the Federal Trade Commission, which charged the company with a long list of "unfair and deceptive" acts.

    "I'm the first to admit that we've made a bunch of mistakes," Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post about the settlement.

    It's an admission he keeps having to make over and over: Tech blog All Things D pointed out that 10 of the 25 posts Zuckerberg has made over the years on Facebook's company blog have been explanations and mea culpas about site changes and screw-ups that irked users. -- Laurie Segall

甲骨文对惠普发动PowerPoint攻击

    本年度“公司爆尿比赛”大奖归属于甲骨文公司（Oracle）。该公司就惠普（Hewlett-Packard）斥资110亿美元收购企业软件供应商 Autonomy公司一事，发布了一系列令人震惊的新闻通告，对其进行了猛烈攻击。

    甲骨文CEO拉里•埃里森在公司的财报电话会议上对这笔交易冷嘲热讽了一番。他说：“Autonomy公司也曾经上门找过我们，但我们当时觉得他们的报价高得离谱。”这场口水战由此打响。

    这番奚落话惹恼了Autonomy公司CEO迈克•林奇。一周后，他在接受《华尔街日报》（the Wall Street Journal）采访时称，他的公司根本就没有跟甲骨文公司洽谈过收购事宜。

    次日，甲骨文公司就用一份言辞异常尖锐的新闻通告予以反击：“林奇先生在2011年4月1日早上11点钟，与他的投资银行家弗兰克•夸特罗内一道来到甲骨文公司，跟甲骨文并购事务主管道格拉斯•凯尔林和公司总裁马克•赫德进行了会谈。”

    甲骨文公司补充道：“林奇赶赴甲骨文的兜售之行很容易验证。他的PowerPoint幻灯片还在我们这里。”

    这可不是开玩笑。林奇再次否认他与甲骨文进行过收购谈判（他说4月份的那次会面是一次非正式的聊天）。之后，甲骨文几小时后就发布了一份名为《Autonomy公司CEO迈克•林奇再次撒谎》（Another Whopper from Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch.）的新闻通告予以回应。它还开启一个新网页Oracle.com/PleaseBuyAutonom，对此事进行了直播。

    正如甲骨文所威胁的，网页上公布的PowerPoint幻灯片将Autonomy公司的财务状况和预测和盘托出，这正是公司与潜在买家交谈时所炫耀的那种诱饵。——史黛西•考莉

Oracle's PowerPoint assault on HP

    The award for "corporate pissing match of the year" goes to Oracle. It fired off an astonishing series of press releases and jabs at Hewlett-Packard over its $11 billion purchase of enterprise software vendor Autonomy.

    The battle started when Oracle CEO Larry Ellison trash-talked the deal during Oracle's earnings call. "Autonomy was shopped to us," Ellison said. "We looked at the price and thought it was absurdly high."

    The dig irked Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch, who told the Wall Street Journal a week later that his company hadn't talked with Oracle about an acquisition.

    Oracle smacked back a day later with an unusually pointed press release: "Mr. Lynch came to Oracle, along with his investment banker, Frank Quattrone, and met with Oracle's head of M&A, Douglas Kehring and Oracle President Mark Hurd at 11 am on April 1, 2011."

    Oracle added: "The Lynch shopping visit to Oracle is easy to verify. We still have his PowerPoint slides."

    It wasn't kidding. After Lynch once again denied having takeover talks -- he cast the April meeting as an informal introductory chat -- Oracle responded hours later with a press release titled "Another Whopper from Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch." It also went live with a new webpage: Oracle.com/PleaseBuyAutonomy.

    As threatened, the site featured the PowerPoints laying bare Autonomy's financials and forecasts -- exactly the kind of bait companies dangle when talking to potential buyers. -- Stacy Cowley

借记卡收费生不逢时引众怒

    银行一直以名目繁多的收费而臭名昭著。但恰恰在占领华尔街运动席卷全国各地的时候，美国最大的金融机构们却开始向借记卡用户收取新的月租费，这个时间点可谓再糟糕不过了。

    美国银行（Bank of America）、富国银行（Wells Fargo）、摩根大通（JP Morgan）和其他银行都打算收取新的费用，但在客户群起反抗，纷纷表示要注销支票账户之后，银行家们迅速收回了这项计划。

    一位有线新闻主播在节目中将她的借记卡切成了碎片，甚至连奥巴马总统都出面谴责这种收费行为。作为最后一家撤销收费计划的大型金融机构，美国银行成了众矢之的。

    具有讽刺意味的是，银行业也许认为把这项收费做到公开透明是在向客户示好。此后，一些银行相继不动声色地提高了账户持有者的其他费用。客户或许赢得了借记卡收费战的胜利，但整场战争的赢家依然是银行。——Nin-Hai Tseng

All those $5 debit card fees

    Banks have always been notorious for charging pesky fees. But the nation's biggest financial institutions couldn't have picked a worse time to try out new monthly charges on debit cards -- right as the Occupy Wall Street movement swept across the nation.

    Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan and other banks planned to levy the new fees, but executives quickly backed off after customers revolted, pledging to close their checking accounts.

    One cable news anchor cut up her card on the air and even President Obama condemned the move. Bank of America, the last major bank to withdraw its plans, received much of the flak.

    Ironically, the banks may have thought they were doing customers a favor by being transparent about their new fees. Since then, several banks have quietly raised other fees on account holders. Customers may have won the battle of the debit card fees but the banks are still winning the war. -- Nin-Hai Tseng

巴菲特的名字被拼错了173次

    他是世界上最富有，也是最常被人们提起的人之一。然而，那些把他的每一句话都奉为圭臬的财经媒体却时常弄错他的名字。

    他是沃伦•巴菲特（Warren Buffett）。“Buffett”中含有两个字母“t”。但许多人只用一个“t”，写成了“Buffet”，结果听起来好像是一场可以敞开肚皮吃的自助餐饕餮盛宴。

    沃伦•巴菲特观察（Warren“Buffet”Watch）博客自3月份推出，迄今它已经捕捉了173次拼写错误（当然实际肯定不止这个数）。

    犯错的包括大多数主要金融出版物、广播、白宫、国会、大学和巴菲特最近收购的一家奥马哈报纸。没错，美国有线电视新闻网(CNN)及其旗下的财经频道（CNNMoney）和《财富》杂志（Fortune）也把巴菲特的名字拼错了许多次。——莱克斯•哈里斯

    译者：任文科

Buffett's name misspelled 173 times

    He's one of the world's richest people and also one of the most quoted. And yet, the business media that hangs on his every word routinely gets his name wrong.

    It's Warren Buffett, with two "tt's". Use one t -- as so many do -- and it's "Buffet," which, you know, sounds like one of those all-you-can eat things.

    Warren 'Buffet' Watch captured 173 mess-ups since its launch in March (there were surely many more).

    Offenders included most major financial publications, broadcasters, the White House and Congress, the Omaha paper Buffett recently acquired, and universities. And yes, CNN -- and CNNMoney and Fortune -- made more than a few appearances. -- Lex Haris