Server downtime is a fact of life for most web administrators, and there’s no shortage of products and software that make it easy to monitor when something has gone awry. Of course, an inbox full of urgent emails telling you your server is frying isn’t too helpful when you’re sound asleep.That’s where PagerDuty, a startup that launched a year ago, is looking to help. Today the company is ...

Intel has just announced that it will acquire Texas Instruments’ cable modem product line. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2010, were not disclosed. Unsurprisingly, Intel says the acquisition will help further its foray into providing chips to the cable and consumer electronics industries. Intel wants to be able to provide products that provide on foundation for consumer e...

Editor’s note: Is the law of large numbers getting to Google? Innovation is hard, especially when a new idea needs to create billions of dollars in revenue for it to count. In the the following guest post, author and former venture capitalist Peter Sims talks about the challenges Google faces not to suffer the same fate as every other dominant tech company before it. Sims is co-author of True North:...

This week for OMG/JK, the show on TechCrunch TV that I do with fellow writer Jason Kincaid, we decided to switch things up a bit. Because there was a major announcement, Facebook Places, that we both covered, we decided to devote the entire show to that one topic. Yes, it’s a little longer than usual (about 20 minutes), but I think the conversation is pretty interesting and dynamic. Obviously, we talk about...

Beyond the Rack, a members-only sample sale site, has raised another round of funding today. The startup has just announced a $12 million round of funding from Highland Capital Partners and BDC Venture Capital. This brings the Beyond The Rack’s total funding to $16.5 million. Similar to Gilt Groupe, HauteLook and Ideeli, Beyond the Rack is a members-only shopping site that offers steeply discounted (from 50 to...