Weekly Knowledge Dump for 9.16.11

The Weekly Knowledge Dump is the weekly tech column that gives you the biggest news in the tech world for the past week, plus a guide to all of the interesting but non-news stories from the past week. It’s like backing up a dump truck of knowledge to your brain.

Note: This was an extremely slow news week, so rather than just share a bunch of useless stories with you, we only have three stories this week. Maybe next week will have some big, exciting event. Let’s hope…

Microsoft Shows off Windows 8

Every year Apple holds their WWDC conference where they announce all of the latest and greatest versions of their products. Microsoft has the same thing with their BUILD conference. It’s a place for them to show developers what is coming next. And what’s coming next? Windows 8, of course. Microsoft has made it clear that they want Windows to run everywhere: desktops, laptops and (most importantly) tablets. Windows 8 is a radical revamp of the company’s flagship operating system. It sports a brand new start menu (pictured above) and if you’re using it on a tablet, you won’t even need to access the desktop.

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Netflix Cuts Subscriber Predictions by 1,000,000 Customers

Every company has to tell it’s shareholders how it expects to do for each quarter. Nextflix is probably not too happy about this fact. This week they had to tell their shareholders that they were lowering the number of subscribers they would have by year’s end by almost one million people. That equates to almost 8% of their subscriber base. The main reason for the drop in subscribers is most likely Netflix’s changing around the plans they offer. While Instant Streaming used to be included in all but their lowest cost plan, they now charge an extra $7.99 a month for the feature. This is obviously not good for Netflix, since they grew by almost 20% last quarter. That means that they actually lost 28%, since they also stopped growing.

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HTC’s President Says iPhones Aren’t Cool Anymore

In an interview at the Mobile Future Forward conference, HTC President Martin Fitcher said that according to a survey conducted at Reed College, kids don’t think the iPhone is cool. He told the crowd, “I brought my daughter back to college — she’s down in Portland at Reed — and I talked to a few of the kids on her floor. And none of them has an iPhone because they told me: ‘My dad has an iPhone.’ There’s an interesting thing that’s going on in the market. The iPhone becomes a little less cool than it was.” Really, Mr. Fitcher? I have a feeling that it’s actually the other way around: the iPhone is so cool that even the old fogies out there want one…

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Bonus: Interesting Dispatches from the Past Week

Here is a small selection of interesting articles that aren’t really news, but are still worth reading anyway:

• Instapaper’s (Anti-)Social Network by Marco Arment (Marco.org)
• Metro by John Gruber (Daring Fireball)
• Thoughts on Metro by Ben Brooks (The Brooks Review)