Cute Vids

Leg Videos

Cleavage

Boobtube

"Telefonica SA, the Spanish telecommunications powerhouse that has been expanding in Latin America and Eastern Europe, has agreed to buy mobile phone company O2 PLC in a $31.4 billion deal that will help expand in the United Kingdom and German markets.
The Spanish company said Monday it has agreed to pay 200 pence ($3.55) per share in cash for O2 shares, a 22 percent premium over their closing price on Friday. The O2 board recommended that shareholders accept the offer."

NEW YORK - The organizers of the
Miss USA' pageant said Thursday they are evaluating the "behavioral and personal issues" of the reigning winner and will decide her future within a week.

Miss Universe Organization with NBC, would not say what Kentucky native Tara Conner, 20, had done to prompt the serious evaluation.
"I can't really talk about it now," Trump said. "But we have to make a decision. There is no question about that."

Sonoa Systems

"Sonoa Systems, founded July 2004, brings together a remarkable team of experts with many years of experience to solve next generation enterprise IT infrastructure problems. Sonoa Systems is a product company developing infrastructure products for web-services-enabled enterprises.

The Sonoa Management Team combines a wealth of experience in the four key technology areas for Enterprise data centers - server, networking, storage and applications. Sonoa Team members have been integral parts of successful startups and large corporations including Sun, Cisco, Tibco, Redback, Cerent, and Intel. "

Sprint launches music download service

"The No. 3 U.S. mobile service Sprint Nextel Corp. (S.N: Quote, Profile, Research) on Monday introduced a wireless music download service using phones from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.(005930.KS: Quote, Profile, Research) and Sanyo Electric Co. (6764.T: Quote, Profile, Research) .
The service is part of an ongoing effort to boost revenue by getting customers to use their handsets for more than just phone calls. Music is seen as one of the next big things in phones, most of which already sport cameras and Web browsers."

America's Most Powerful Women in Business - Hedge Funds: Where the Girls Aren't - FORTUNE - Page

"Go to a conference of hedge fund managers, or a benefit, or just an old-fashioned booze-up, and it is obvious that something is missing: women. The financial services industry isn't known for being particularly female-friendly; not many women are mutual fund managers either. But hedge funds represent the extreme edge of the spectrum. 'It's Wall Street divided by 100,' says Jacki Zehner, a former Goldman Sachs partner, referring to the percentage of women in the hedge fund industry. There are no hard numbers, but ask people to name women who run major hedge funds, and you often meet with an awkward silence. There are some, of course, such as Elaine Crocker, who is president of Moore Capital Management, and Tanya Styblo Beder, who is launching a new internal hedge fund at Citigroup, but few have their name on the door. "

Are you scary smart?

Hire smart - scarysmart - people says Google.

Ellison, Old Friends in Software Showdown - Yahoo! News

Lethal Beauty / The Allure: Beauty and an easy route to death have long made the Golden Gate Bridge a magnet for suicides.

"The Golden Gate Bridge is the world's No. 1 suicide magnet, in part because it makes suicide so easy. People jump and kill themselves there, an average of 19 a year. In the peak year, 1977, there were 40 suicides. Some dive not expecting obscurity or oblivion but a kind of grace -- a welcoming body of water that inducts the jumper into nature. "

Riya - Photo Search

Quite cool

Silverpop Adds Personalize-able RSS

"Silverpop has become the first well-known e-mail service provider (ESP) to integrate RSS (define) into its offerings. The company has built a proprietary tool, called RSSDirect, that lets it track individual subscriptions and dynamically generate content for RSS.
Silverpop CEO Bill Nussey said the company's goal was to introduce all the data marketers get with e-mail to the new spam-free medium, which he expects to grow to 'near ubiquity' over the next several years. "

John Cook's Venture Blog - Stealth startup of the week

"Just who is Vizrea?
That question is a bit difficult to answer since they have not returned phone calls. But the company's Web site indicates that they are building a 'complete photo solution for camera phone users.'"

Stockholders at Sun reject poison pill / 84% vote to repeal anti-takeover proposal despite opposition by board and CEO

"In a stunning rebuke, Sun Microsystems stockholders voted overwhelmingly Thursday for the repeal of an anti-takeover measure that makes it harder for a hostile bidder to amass enough shares to buy the company. "

CNN.com - IBM-Google team for corporate search tool - Oct 28, 2005

"IBM and Google Inc. are collaborating to make it easier for office workers not only to search for local documents and personal e-mail but to delve deep into corporate databases, the companies said on Friday."

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

This company is most definetely a home run despite Sequoia paying a hefty valuation for the deal.

HP Compaq Business Notebook nx6110 - Pentium M 730 1.6 GHz - 15" TFT Reviews. Laptops Reviews by CNET.

"The good: Inexpensive; long battery life; good keyboard, touch pad, and mouse buttons; well-labeled ports and slots; better-than-average speakers; lifetime toll-free phone support and real-time chat support.
The bad: Lacks multimedia controls; low screen resolution results in blurry text; merely average performance.
The bottom line: It's neither fast nor fancy, but for users who want a laptop for basic productivity work, the inexpensive HP Compaq nx6110 is a good fit."

Microsoft 1Q Earnings Rise 24 Percent: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"Microsoft Corp. said Thursday that earnings for its fiscal first quarter rose 24 percent, helped by strong growth in the personal computer and server market.
For the quarter ended Sept. 30, the Redmond-based software maker reported earnings of $3.14 billion, or 29 cents per share, up from $2.53 billion, or 23 cents per share, in the same period last year."

Carnage on the street.

SafeNet Reports Third Quarter 2005 Financial Results: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"SafeNet (NASDAQ:SFNT - News), setting the standard for information security, today announced results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2005.
Revenues for the three-month period ended September 30, 2005 increased 7 percent to $63.4 million, compared to $59.5 million for the same period in 2004. "

CPU Watch: PCWorld: Startup Unveils Low-Power CPU

"A group of chip industry veterans is expected to introduce their new company, P.A. Semi, on Monday at In-Stat/MDR's Fall Processor Forum, along with a new low-power chip based on IBM's Power architecture.

The PWRficient family of processors are the first products announced by P.A. Semi, which was founded two years ago by chip designers such as Dan Dobberpuhl, a lead architect of the Alpha and StrongARM processors. Dobberpuhl is the Santa Clara, California, company's president and CEO. "

[MSN / IDG]

Creation Robot: Game Console Sales

"PSOne sales: 100,900,000
PS2 sales: 74,000,000 (Started making a profit for Sony in 2005)
NES sales: 61,780,000
SNES sales: 49,020,000
Genesis sales: 35,000,000
N64 sales: 32,930,000
2600 sales: 25,000,000
Xbox sales: 22,000,000 (Lost Microsoft 4 billion USD)
Gamecube sales: 18,760,000
Dreamcast sales: 10,000,000
Shame I don't have handheld figures, because I wonder if the GameBoy has sold more than all of these combined"

Blog doesn't site source or date.

TechCrunch Profile: PodShow

TechCrunch Profile: PodShow


Adam Curry, aka the Podfather heads up Podshow one of the companies backed by KP. Mr Curry also predicts that pod porn will be "huge".

Samsung has 200,200 mobile TV subscribers in S. Korea

"South Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung announced this week that 200,200 subscribers have signed up for mobile TV services based on its home-grown satellite digital mobile broadcasting (S-DMB) mobile TV technology. "

Now Playing: Your Home Video - New York Times

"Captain Jack is an atypical movie star. A blind Chihuahua rescued from a shelter, he does not have a B-list celebrity owner or a craving for tacos. And he can be a bit cantankerous, according to his companion, Deborah Tallent. 'He didn't like me at first, until I gave him a piece of chicken,' she said."

BLIP.TV Service for users who want to integrate video clips into their blogs. www.blip.tv

CLIPSHACK Basic, simple user interface. Limit of 50 megabytes of storage. www.clipshack.com

GOOGLE VIDEO Accepts clips of unlimited length and makes them searchable. video.google.com

OURMEDIA.ORG Stores videos in the Internet Archive, which is intended to be a permanent online trove. www.ourmedia.org

PHANFARE $6.95 monthly fee covers unlimited video posting, but individual videos may not exceed 10 megabytes. www.phanfare.com

VIMEO Circles of friends and family members can easily keep up with and comment on one another's clips. www.vimeo.com

YOUTUBE Site keeps track of most-viewed, most-discussed and best-rated videos; organizes similar clips into "channels," like sports or humor. www.youtube.com

[Nytimes]

Youtube, backed by Sequoia and Google Video are likely the eventual winners in this space given the capital spending power and resources both companies have over competitors.

Netgear Sinks on Margin Worries

"Router maker Netgear (NTGR:Nasdaq - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) reported a third-quarter profit, but its shares fell 7% after the company posted soft sales and said margins would be pinched in the fourth period.
The Santa Clara, Calif., maker of Internet traffic-sorting devices made $8.6 million, or 25 cents a share, for the third quarter ended Oct. 2. That's up from the year-ago $5.9 million, or 18 cents a share. Revenue rose to $111 million from $101 million a year earlier. Excluding certain costs, latest-quarter earnings were 27 cents a share. Analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call had forecast a 27-cent profit on sales of $116 million. "

[TheStreet]

Adteractive

"Adteractive produced over $100 million in revenue in 2004, with strong profitability, and has been profitable since February 2001, its 2nd month of business operations. "

[Craigslist]

Bad Show at Baidu

More from TheStreet:
Baidu (BIDU:Nasdaq - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) posted a third-quarter profit, but its shares fell sharply in late action Wednesday.

The Beijing-based Internet search outfit made $1.1 million, or 3 cents a share. That's down 29% sequentially but nearly triple the year-ago level. Revenue rose 28% sequentially and 174% from a year ago to $11 million.

BIDU: Real-Time ECN for BAIDU.COM, INC. - Yahoo! Finance

Ouch. Baidu. Investors should have heeded the analyst's predictions around valution and earnings.

"BAIDU.COM, INC. (RT-ECN)
Symbol:BIDU
Last Trade:69.52 4:55PM ET
After Hours Change: 11.53 (14.23%)
Today's Change: 10.29 (12.89%)"

Zoom Systems plans expansion of iPod vending machine network - Engadget

"We’ve been tempted to pick up an iPod or digital camera via a Zoom Systems vending machine ever since we first got tipped to them a few months ago...."

Trusted Data Secures $6 Million in Series A Funding to Develop New Storage Technology

"Trusted Data, an emerging technology company developing a new class of storage for the non-technical computer user, today announced it received Series A funding to advance the company's product development. Leading venture firms, Greylock Partners and
RRE Ventures, have invested $6 million in Trusted Data's technology."

Tech trio in US$500m IPOs

"Three mainland technology firms are readying initial public offerings on the Nasdaq worth a combined US$500 million (HK$3.9 billion) or more by the year's end, seeking to capitalize on strong demand for China plays on global markets.
Nasdaq has ramped up marketing activity in China, hoping to surpass the 10 domestic companies it listed last year despite some concern over the more stringent requirements of US disclosure and accounting standards.
Many of the mainland companies going to Nasdaq are start-ups, as opposed to former state-owned monopolies, that have been funded and guided by offshore venture capitalists with the express purpose of ultimately doing an overseas IPO."

[TheStandard]

Vacuum, military robots maker iRobot sets IPO | Reuters.com

"IRobot Corp., the maker of the Roomba floor vacuum robot and PackBot tactical military robots, on Monday set its planned initial public offering at 4.3 million shares for between $21 and $23 per share.
The underwriters, led by Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan, will have the option to buy 645,000 more shares to cover over-allotments, according to an amended offering document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
In the IPO iRobot plans to offer 3.3 million shares and selling stockholders are offering more than 1 million shares."

IMesh Rolls Out New File-Sharing Software - Yahoo! News

"Popular peer-to-peer, file-sharing service iMesh introduced new software Tuesday that allows users to legally share and buy music online. "

Google wants your car listings, events, etc. | Tech News on ZDNet

"In a move that could put Google in competition with eBay, the search giant is testing a new service that would allow people to post and make searchable any type of content, a Google spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday. "

Google Base on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Google Gives Peek at Classified Ad Service: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"Google Inc. has unintentionally provided a sneak peek at what appears to be a looming expansion into classified advertising -- a free service that might antagonize some of the Internet search engine's biggest customers, including online auctioneer eBay Inc."

RED HERRING | Silicon Labs� Cheap Phone Chip

"Silicon Laboratories on Monday introduced a chip designed for cheap cell phones for emerging markets, a move that will pit the chip maker against much larger competitors.

The company, based in Austin, Texas, unveiled the Aerofone chip that combines various functions onto a single piece of silicon, a difficult engineering feat. Those capabilities now lie in several chips in today�s cell phones. "

Light Reading - Ericsson Buys Marconi Assets

"Ericsson today announces that it has reached an agreement with Marconi Corporation plc to acquire the parts of Marconi's telecommunications business that are strategically important to Ericsson.
The agreement strengthens Ericsson's position in the accelerating transmission segment
Expands Ericsson's platform for leadership in next generation converging networks
Adds sales of approximately SEK 14.0 b. (GBP 1.0 b.), acquisition price SEK 16.8 b. (GBP 1.2 b.)
Will contribute positively to EPS from 2007, neutral effect in 2006
Headquarters and certain businesses in UK and Germany are not part of the acquisition
Marconi's UK pension plan is not part of the acquisition "

Update 3: BSkyB Agrees to Takeover of Easynet Group - Forbes.com

"Pay TV operator British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC said Friday it has agreed to a 211 million pound (US$375.1 million; euro312.6 million) takeover of high-speed Internet provider Easynet Group PLC.

The deal will give BSkyB a crucial 'triple play' service - the ability to offer customers a combined package of high-speed Internet access, pay-TV and phone calls. "

Expedia Founder Takes On Online Real Estate With Zillow.com

Venturewire: "Sealing Series A financing from venture firms Benchmark Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures, Zillow.com aims to do for residential real estate what Expedia.com did for travel reservations.

'It is one of those huge businesses...where we all still tend to pay 6% commission when we transact houses,' said co-founder and Chief Executive Richard Barton. 'It looks a little strange and we're trying to figure out why.'

Still in stealth mode, Zillow is keeping quiet about its business model; the company's Web site won't go live for several months.

Juniper buys Acorn Packet Solutions: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"Juniper Networks Inc. said Tuesday it has agreed to acquire Acorn Packet Solutions Inc. for about $8.7 million in cash."

Revenue for Acorn Packet Solutions was less than $1 million in fiscal 2004. Juniper said the acquisition was completed on Oct. 20.

answers to technical interview questions

answers to technical interview questions

gizmondo

"In the rough-and-tumble world of gaming, its tough to be the new kid on the block. Bringing fresh function to a market where names like Nintendo and Sony rule the roost, Tiger Telematics has rolled out the Gizmondo, a handheld that bristles with features and analog content in an effort to get a foothold against the competition.
The 187-gram Gizmondo handheld resembles a console-style game controller with a 2.8 inch diagonal LCD in the middle and control buttons sprinkled around the product surface. Inside the case lives a cellular GPRS radio, Bluetooth, camera, and a GPS receiver to complement the processing platform which runs fun and serious software for the device. "

MercuryNews.com | 10/24/2005 | Chip maker emerges from stealth mode

"It isn't easy to hide a 150-employee microprocessor chip start-up in Silicon Valley.
But Dan Dobberpuhl managed to do it for two years, and he had his reasons. For one, he had to keep his product secret from much bigger rivals.
Concealing his team inside two floors of the McAfee high-rise building in Santa Clara, he asked new recruits to get on board without knowing what the company was doing. Once they were working, he asked them not to tell their spouses what they were working on.
``It was tricky to hire people without telling them what they would do,'' he said. ``We had to say, `Trust us. It's good.' ''"

P.A. Semi - Power to Perform

"Emerging from more than two years of stealth development, P.A. Semi today unveiled the PWRficientTM processor family a 64-bit multicore, scalable processor line based on the Power ArchitectureTM from IBM that delivers high performance at very low power consumption, offering up to a tenfold advantage in performance per watt over the industry. P.A. Semi is headed by Dan Dobberpuhl, the acclaimed lead designer of the DEC Alpha series of microprocessors, the ultra-power-efficient StrongARM microprocessors, and the first commercial multicore processors including the SiByte 1250. The 150-strong processor, ASIC, software and systems engineering team also includes key designers of other defining processor architectures, such as Opteron, Itanium, and UltraSPARC."

Greg Yardley's Internet Blog Web 2.0 - Sergey Brin appearance

Notes at web2.0 conference from Yardley's blog

RED HERRING | Aruba Adds $25M in Funding

Aruba marketing Vice President Keerti Melkote said, “It is not in Cisco’s best interest to push mobility.� He noted Aruba had seen 100 percent sales growth in the last quarter of the year, and is bringing in over $1 million in sales per week.

Vending Machines Sell IPods to Go - Yahoo! News

You want an IPod? It's over there: just beneath the NyQuil and next to the Gatorade. Apple Computer's hot digital music players may be better associated with the company's hip Apple Stores, but in the past few months they've also popped up next to less exotic products in special vending machines built by Zoom Systems.


Since spring, the San Francisco company has been selling IPods across the U.S. in "robotic product delivery systems" (don't say the words "vending machine" around Zoom Systems executives; they find the term archaic). The first IPods were sold in Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, and the players can now be found in "Zoom Shop" machines operating in malls, hotels and grocery stores across the country, the company said.


Though Zoom Shops sell plenty of other products, including digital cameras and snacks, the IPod is the top seller, said Rick Cusick, Zoom Systems' executive vice president of merchandising. "It seems to unleash an incredible impulse opportunity," he said. "You can walk up and buy and IPod in 20 seconds."

Flock Founder Hopes New Browser Will Fly - Yahoo! News

"Startup Flock has released a Firefox-based browser meant to enhance the user experience by incorporating some of the Web's most social features, such as file sharing, RSS feeds, and Web logging, according to the company's co-founder. "

MySQL Steps Up - Forbes.com

"Until recently, big software makers like Oracle--$12 billion in revenue for fiscal 2005--have shrugged off the threat posed by free software rivals like MySQL, which took in a mere $20 million in revenue last year.

But MySQL is becoming too popular to ignore. Plus, hardware companies like Hewlett-Packard (nyse: HPQ - news - people ) and Sun Microsystems (nasdaq: SUNW - news - people ) are throwing their weight behind MySQL. HP is helping customers adopt a 'stack' of open-source programs that include Linux and MySQL, testing them to make sure they work well together, says Martin Fink, vice president of HP's open-source and Linux organization. "

Fighting back, Oracle earlier this month acquired Innobase, an obscure Finnish software maker that provides a key part of MySQL's program. This means that when MySQL needs to renew its Innobase license, it will have to negotiate with Oracle. The acquisition also enables Oracle to introduce its own open-source database, to keep customers from switching to MySQL. Can a plucky little upstart from Sweden really compete against the biggest, meanest software makers in the world? Two years ago it might have seemed crazy. Today it seems inevitable.

Rajan's Rambling: Firefox bugmenot plugin

Peerflix

PeerFlix Inc., a Menlo Park, Calif.-based peer-to-peer service that allows members to legally trade DVDs, has raised around $8 million in Series B funding, according to a regulatory filing. Battery Ventures led the deal, and was joined by return backers 3i Group and BV Capital.

[Dan Primack]

CanyonBridge raises $8.3M

CanyonBridge, developer of Web-services business applications that has signed a deal with Salesforce.com. The company also has raised $8.3 million in Series A funding.

Startup Working on Lower-Power Chips - Yahoo! News

"P.A. Semi Inc. is set to emerge Monday after working the last two years in stealth mode, growing from a tiny team of big-name chip designers working out of a 600 square-foot office in Palo Alto to a company whose 150 employees occupy two floors in a high-rise in Santa Clara, the hometown of No. 1 chipmaker Intel Corp.
At the Fall Processor Forum here this week, P.A. Semi will announce how it has designed a high-performance chip it claims will consume as much as 10 times less power than today's comparable products. But because it takes an average of four years to design and produce a new chip, P.A. Semi said its processors won't hit the market until 2007."

Microsoft debuts Office upgrade - Financial Times - MSNBC.com

"Microsoftis set on Monday to unveil new capabilities for its Office suite of PC applications that are expected to play a central part in its efforts to maintain the growth of one of its most important money-earners."

Column from PC Magazine: WeatherBug Is Not Spyware

"WeatherBug is not spyware. Period. I've said it before and I mean it. End of story. . . or is it just the beginning? "

AJAX: New Web Software a Challenge to Microsoft - Yahoo! News

"A quiet revolution is transforming life on the Internet: New, agile software now lets people quickly check flight options, see stock prices fluctuate and better manage their online photos and e-mail.
Such tools make computing less of a chore because they sit on distant Web servers and run over standard browsers. Users thus don't have to worry about installing software or moving data when they switch computers.
And that could bode ill for Microsoft Corp. and its flagship Office suite, which packs together word processing, spreadsheets and other applications.
The threat comes in large part from Ajax, a set of Web development tools that speeds up Web applications by summoning snippets of data as needed instead of pulling entire Web pages over and over."

RED HERRING | Saifun, Passave Set IPOs

Two semiconductor companies with facilities in Israel, Saifun Semiconductors and Passave, filed information with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday in preparation for an initial public offering.

Saifun, based in Netanya, Israel, filed a registration statement with the SEC for a proposed IPO of 5 million ordinary shares. All the shares will be sold by Saifun. Saifun also granted its underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an aggregate of 750,000 ordinary shares.

Passave is a Santa Clara, California-based fabless semiconductor company with facilities in Herzliya, Israel, and Tokyo. The company set its IPO at 4.7 million shares at an estimated price of $15 to $17 each, according to Reuters.

RED HERRING | SanDisk Buys Matrix: $260M

"Flash memory giant SanDisk said it will buy Matrix Semiconductor, the inventor of a three-dimensional integrated circuit, for $260 million in stock and cash.

SanDisk will pay Matrix $12 million in cash and another $238 million in newly-issued SanDisk stock."

RED HERRING | The Hazards of Offshoring

"Like the line the doesn't know the territory in the The Music Man, experts say the biggest mistake a company can make is failing to take time to get to know the region."

During a panel discussion in San Francisco, Ashish Gupta, a partner at the Woodside Fund, said U.S.-based managers can’t rely on advisors and agents when contemplating a move offshore.

Even a quarterly visit to India, or hiring a scout for an overseas operation, often is not enough, he said. “In the first case, you get a cold, you get jet lag, and you lose money,� Mr. Gupta said during Thursday’s presentation. “The second gets more insecure over time, but might be a transitional model.�

RFID Monitors Beer Temperatures - Yahoo! News

"No one likes to buy spoiled beer. That's why Sun Microsystems Inc. is working with an undisclosed beer distributor to install an application based on radio frequency identification technology on cases and kegs. "

Flock Spreads Wings, Releases Beta Version of New Browser - Yahoo! News

"A new Web browser with a socially conscious streak was released for public tryout Thursday night by a group of 15 young entrepreneurs housed in a garage just off the Stanford University campus in Northern California. "

Downloaded it. Very buggy.

XenSource Poised To Reshape The Virtualization Market - Yahoo! News

"With its first commercial open-source solutions expected to launch within weeks, XenSource is poised to challenge VMware and commoditize the virtualization software market, observers predict. "

Microsoft Develops Virtual Wi-Fi Tech - Yahoo! News

"Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT - news) is experimenting with a virtualization architecture for wireless LAN (WLAN) cards that will let Wi-Fi users connect one machine to multiple wireless networks simultaneously. Analysts are saying the technology promises to solve some of the problems associated with next-generation networks."

My Great Idea For IPod Porn - SFGate

"I am the first. At least, I am the first I know of to think of this idea at this very moment in time in this exact space which you are right now reading, given how I'm quite sure the very minute Apple announced their sexy delicious new video-capable iPod roughly five million people and most of them men simultaneously thought of it too. "

[SFGate]

Sadly, Mark. You are not the first. Pod porn will be 'uge.

eBay chief sees free VoIP calls

1. eBay chief sees free VoIP calls


Meg Whitman, eBay's CEO, predicts that within just a few years consumers will be able to make phone calls with no per-minute charges thanks to new provider pricing models that are based on transaction fees or advertising. Speaking during the company's quarterly conference call, Whitman defended the online auctioneer's recent acquisition of Skype. She observed that Skype's explosive success would eventually drive phone call costs to zero. "The percentage of users that you can actually charge for (phone services) will actually go down... we understood that when we looked at Skype," Whitman stated in response to an analyst's question. "In the end, the price that anyone can provide for voice transmission on the 'Net will trend toward zero."

[FierceWireless]

Blackstone, Carlyle Make Bids for Dunkin' Donuts

"Blackstone Group LP and Carlyle Group made competing buyout offers this week for Dunkin' Donuts and two other restaurant units being sold by Pernod Ricard SA, people familiar with the matter said. "

[Bloomberg.com: U.S.]

Tits

Google should hire these gals

Yahoo Japan posts higher Q2, expects strong Q3

"Yahoo Japan Corp. (4689.T: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Friday its quarterly net profit grew 29 percent, helped by its online auction and Web advertising businesses, and forecast strong results in the current quarter."

The report comes a day after U.S. Web search leader Google Inc. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) posted a surge in quarterly profit that topped Wall Street expectations, helped by what it called a "seachange" shift to online marketing from print and broadcast.

California-based Yahoo Inc. (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , which owns 33.5 percent of Yahoo Japan, on Tuesday reported steady profits for the July to September period and moderately raised its revenue target for the current quarter.

[Reuters]

Who Has Time For This?: Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Reliable, inside sources who understandably wish to remain anonymous have confirmed to me that (and I kid you not) Google's recruiters have been directed to hire every attractive single woman they can. Now that Grateful Dead chef Charlie Ayers cashed in his stock option, this is Google's new retention program.

[David Cowan]

All that money and no hot chicks? What's a geek to do? Hire HOT chicks!!!

Flock

"Who are you people, anyway?
Well, we're pretty much a bunch of regular folks trying to shake things up.
We started Flock to build tools that empower people and smooth out some of the more hairy parts of living and working online. As it is, we live and breathe this stuff everyday and wanted better tools to do the things that we love doing online. "

Hottest company to watch according to some. We'll see...

TechCrunch - Top Five Web 2.0 Venture Capitalists

A list is a list is just a list.

Yahoo! Publisher Network

China Venture News - "Technology, Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship" - Mayfield Fund Invests in Chinese Online Dating Service

After only two months of closing their new $375-million fund slated for investments in emerging-growth technology companies, the Silicon Valley based Mayfield Fund summarily completed its last investments from its initial $1-billion fund raised in 2000, which included banking on a popular Chinese online dating service, Heiyou.

These latest investments—tapped from Mayfield’s Fund XI—are the firm’s first with partner GSR Ventures, a China-based venture capital firm focused on early-stage Chinese technology companies.

Packeteer Sent Packing

"Packeteer (PKTR:Nasdaq - news - research - Cramer's Take) plunged 33% late Thursday after the networking technology outfit posted a putrid third-quarter performance. "

[TheStreet]

Ouch

Google's 3Q Profit Seven Times Higher: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Google Inc.'s rapidly rising profits soared to new heights in the third quarter as its Internet-leading search engine churned out a sevenfold earnings improvement that blew past analyst expectations.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company said Thursday that it made $381.2 million, or $1.32 per share, during the three months ended in September. That compared with net income of $52 million, or 19 cents per share, a year ago. Last year's results included a $201 million charge to account for a legal settlement with rival Yahoo Inc.

If not for charges related to a recent acquisition and employee stock options issued before the company went public 14 months ago, Google said it would have earned $1.51 per share.

That figure easily exceeded the consensus estimate of $1.36 per share among 31 analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. Even the most bullish analysts hadn't expected Google to fare as well as it did; the highest earnings estimate had been $1.46 per share.

[AP]

TheDeal.com - Reviving Weisel plans IPO

"In a move that has been long speculated, San Francisco technology investment banking boutique Thomas Weisel Partners filed on Wednesday, Oct. 19, for an initial public offering to raise up to $65 million.
Weisel is leading the offering, along with co-lead underwriter Goldman, Sachs & Co. and co-manager Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc. The firm plans to list on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol TWPG. "

Bloomberg.com: Asia

"Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra today confirmed one more Thai man has died of bird flu, the first fatality in the kingdom this year and the 13th since the first outbreak in January 2004.
``The second test on a dead person came out last night and found that the man in Kanchanaburi province had died from the bird flu,'' Thaksin said during his weekly press conference. ``He has a track record of contact with chickens. But don't panic, the health minister this afternoon will go to the area to supervise the cleaning.'' No age was given for the dead man. "

Where are the disruptive start-ups in Web 2.0? | Web 2.0 Explorer | ZDNet.com

"Umair Haque thinks Web 2.0 economics is causing start-ups to focus more on getting acquired than creating real innovation."

Firefox sees 100 millionth download

"Mozilla has seen steady adoption of its browser since its release last November. After a somewhat higher download rate immediately following its release, the browser has settled into between 200,000 and 300,000 downloads a day, said Asa Dotzler, the Mozilla liaison to the SpreadFirefox community. "

[Tech News on ZDNet]

Firefox's revs are over 30M+. And they started a unit recently around monetizing their services.

Ballmer: Microsoft's Priority Is Innovation

"Microsoft plans to keep customers happy and competitors at bay 'the good old fashioned way with innovation,' according to company CEO Steve Ballmer.
'It's top priority for us to be an innovative company,' Ballmer said in a keynote address at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo here. "

[eweek]

Fugitive Rat Teaches Lesson About Invasive Species Control

"It sounds like a plot from a Tom and Jerry cartoon: Intrepid hunters spend weeks on an island setting complex traps while their quarry evades them at every turn. "

RED HERRING | TechSpin: Moto�s Unsung iRadio

"It is not as sexy as the video-enabled iPod or as famous as the ROKR, or the iTunes mobile phone, but Motorola's iRadio is one of the more impressive products of the current genre of mobile entertainment devices. For some reason, the company has not spent as much effort promoting iRadio as it has pushing the ROKR and its slimmer offspring still in development. Motorola's iRadio is smarter than the ROKR in that instead of marrying downloaded music and the cell phone, it marries radio and the cell phone. You can download music at your computer and listen to it on your car radio via a Bluetooth link or you can carry it with you on a walk or on the train where reception is not a problem, as the content is stored on the phone/music player. The user does not have to worry about payment for content because it is designed for one-time use, just like traditional radio. You listen to it and then it disappears forever. "

RED HERRING | VC Action: China Blogs

"Venture capitalist David Cowan was a blog skeptic before he joined the consortium of VCs that invested $10 million in Chinese blog portal Bokee.com. He decided to dip a toe into the blogosphere back in July to figure out why online journals seemed to be taking off. So Mr. Cowan, a VC at Bessemer Venture Partners, got the domain whohastimeforthis.blogspot.com, and started posting."

RED HERRING | Chinese Dot-Com Gets $8M

"Chinese Internet portal Chinacars.com picked up an $8-million first round of venture investment from Granite Global Ventures on Wednesday.

The startup, founded in 2001, said it expects to book 100 million Yuan ($12.4 million) in revenue for 2005. It employs 300."

How Private Equity Firms Can Play In China - Forbes.com

"International private equity houses are stepping up their efforts to invest in China in the next few years, reflecting a gold rush mentality that could leave some investors disappointed. "

Touchy Touchy - Forbes.com

"Synaptics rode the iPod into the big time. But once Apple dropped the company, its chief, Francis Lee, had to scramble."

Apple's Video iPod Seen as 'Evolutionary' Opportunity - Forbes.com

"Banc of America Securities Chief Financial Analyst Keith Bachman maintained a 'buy'' rating and $52 price target on Apple Computer (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) after testing the new video downloading features of iTunes 6.

'We continue to believe that Apple's iPod video will be an evolutionary opportunity, not revolutionary,' Bachman said. 'Apple had more content and more competitive advantage in the music market as compared to the video market.'

After downloading a Madonna video and an episode of Desperate Housewives, the analyst concluded that while consumers would be satisfied with the download speed, more content will be necessary to make the iPod video appeal to a mass audience. "

AJAX Innovator - $10,000 Referral Award

"Company: DarthDex
Location: SF Bay Area, CA

A $10,000 bounty is offered for this position. Earn all or part of this reward by referring the right candidate or emailing this listing to candidates or potential referrers.

Apply, Refer or Email this Listing at http://www.yorz.com/listing/276836.htm "

AJAX Expert

"Applied Minds is looking for a seasoned software professional who can do amazing things with AJAX. You are a software engineer or a highly technical interactive designer with experience building custom GUIs. You will be developing a functional prototype of an interactive client application that is connected to an underlying database. "

Robotic Rollouts

"Venture capitalists tend to be fairly conservative people -- despite their reputation for risk taking. Consequently, few robot-makers have received venture funding. In fact, it's possible that many VCs put robot business models on a par with time travel and jet-pack transportation.
With the announcement of a $115 million IPO by Burlington, MA-based iRobot, though, companies commercializing robot technology are beginning to attract VC attention. On his blog Feld Thoughts, venture capitalist Brad Feld admits to such hindsight: iRobot will go down in my history as one of those companies I was too stupid to invest in...Robotic Vacuum Cleaner? C'mon.'
iRobot is the breakaway leader in the commercial robots market. The company has shipped more than 1.2 million Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners, each retailing for $150-275. iRobots has also launched a robotic mop, and it has a line of costly military-grade robots. To top off its already-booming sales, the company will be launching a large 'I love Robots' ad campaign.
Another robot company, Zoom Systems, raised $12 million in September. Zoom also signed on the chief financial officer of retailer Mervyns' as its own CFO. The company makes and operates robotic kiosks often located in hotels and airports, which function as automated convenience stores. In addition to snacks and drinks, the kiosks sell high-end items such as iPod Minis, with price points up to $500. The company hopes to have 10,000 machines in place by 2010. "

[Technology Review]

Etron said to land video iPod SDRAM orders | TG Daily

"Taiwan-based IC design house Etron Technology will be one of the SDRAM suppliers for the Apple video iPod and the design house has already started supplying the SDRAM chips to Apple's OEM partners at Taiwan, according to sources. Etron was unavailable for comment at the time of publication."

what is it?

what is it?

ebay's latest commercials.

WSJ.com - 'Splogs' Roil Web, and Some Blame Google

"The phony blogs are a particular problem for Google, Microsoft and Yahoo because each offers not only a Web search engine focused on providing the most relevant results for users but also a service to let bloggers create blogs.

Just this past weekend, Google's popular blog-creation tool, Blogger, was targeted in an apparently coordinated effort to create more than 13,000 splogs, the search giant said. The splogs were laced with popular keywords so that they would appear prominently in blog searches, and several bloggers complained online that that the splogs were gumming up searches for legitimate sites."

Technology - Remaking Murdoch's Colossus - FORTUNE - Page 4

"The big fear is that MySpace is a fad and will decline when young people tire of it, as they did of its rival Friendster. And Murdoch wants to make sure he didn't spend $580 million on a trendy website that won't be important a year from now. 'To prevent it from becoming yesterday's fad, we have to give people more and more and make them feel a part of it,' he says. Speaking about MySpace and IGN whose raucous videogame sites hit a slightly older, more male demographic at an investing conference in mid-September, Murdoch said, 'Both are either $500 million mistakes, or they're going to look very, very smart.'
If they do end up looking smart, it will be because Murdoch figured out how to transmogrify a big old-media company into a lean, mean web machine something none of his peers has achieved. 'Rupert is doing what he's done in the past,' says Larry Kramer, president of Viacom's CBS Digital Media. 'He appears to be trying to get to size and scale quickly. In certain areas on the Internet, size matters. But it's got to work together.' "

[FORTUNE]

It will be a smart move in retrospect. Mark Pincus thinks News Corp should make a play at craigslist - for $1 - 2B. That would certainly be a very wise move but Newmark consistently says they are not for sale. And even if NewsCorp does make a move, ebay still owns 25% of the company and may have blocking provisions around a possible sale.

Technology - Remaking Murdoch's Colossus - FORTUNE - Page 3

Good Fortune article.


"MySpace is a speck of a business. It has 140 employees; revenues in the second quarter came to $7 million. But its importance lies in its growth rate�it's been adding 125,000 users a month�and in the amount of money it spends to generate content, which is very close to zero. Content generation is the job of the teenagers, who spend an average of one hour and 40 minutes a month on the site, writing blogs, listening to music, and viewing one another's photos. MySpace users are uploading photos at the rate of 1.7 million per day. (MySpace 'flaggers,' meanwhile, manually view uploaded photos and delete any that violate the company's no-nudity rule.) Another source of free content: Bigtime bands like REM and Nine Inch Nails�as well as about 500,000 not-so-big acts�use the site to premiere new music, allowing free listening ahead of an album release. 'I told the brass at News Corp., 'You guys spend billions creating content,'' says Richard Rosenblatt, CEO of Intermix, which incubated MySpace as a separate company. 'We spend nothing. What is better than selling ads against content that other people are creating?' "

Search engine for sale: jux2

eBay: Award-winning META-SEARCH engine for sale: jux2.com (item 7554979251 end time Oct-26-05 14:28:21 PDT).

Interesting (and probably a not so smart) way to sell an asset.

Hiring a seasoned investment banker (one that may or may not take the deal) would only cost 3 - 7% of the total deal vs. ebay [~1.50% of the remaining closing value balance ($1,000.01 - closing value)].

twin tower crazy

Creepy

Yahoo buys Whereonearth to bolster local search

"Yahoo (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Tuesday it has acquired a small UK company called Whereonearth to help improve its local search and mobile phone services and compete more effectively with search leader Google (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) .
Whereonearth specialises in location-based Internet services, including a sophisticated database of geographical locations that will let users search for local goods and services without entering a zip code or post code."

McDonald's to launch Nintendo WiFi hotspots

McDonald's to launch Nintendo WiFi hotspots

Nintendo and Wayport have teamed up to offer free WiFi hotspots for Nintendo DS gamers in McDonald's restaurants across the US. Nintendo will launch a complimentary WiFi service called Wi-Fi Connection. WiFi solutions provider Wayport plans to add 1,000 WiFi-enabled McDonald's by June to its existing 6,000 WiFi-enabled locations. McDonald's currently charges laptop users for access to its WiFi services, but the Nintendo arrangement will permit Nintendo DS users to play without a laptop or a fee. Together at last: fast food and video games.

For more on the McDonald's, Nintendo WiFi deal:
- check out this article from the Inquirer

[Fierce Wireless]

China Builds Its Dreams, and Some Fear a Bubble - New York Times

"Move over, New York. This year alone, Shanghai will complete towers with more space for living and working than there is in all the office buildings in New York City."

Pay By Touch acquisition of CardSystems' assets

"Pay By Touch, the leading provider of biometric authentication, payment, loyalty and membership solutions, announced today it has agreed to acquire substantially all of the assets of CardSystems Solutions, Inc., a merchant payment processing provider with approximately 120,000 merchants. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed. "

SmartSynch raises $12M

"SmartSynch, a global leader in wireless smart metering technology for the energy industry, announced today that it has received an additional $12 million in venture capital funding. SmartSynch also reported that Battelle Ventures, an investment firm whose sole limited partner is Battelle Memorial Institute, has become a company investor. "

Technology - Steve Jobs Speaks: What's Next for Apple - FORTUNE

"Apple may be just a minor player in the computer and consumer electronics industries in terms of revenue ($14 billion in fiscal 2005) and market share (less than 5% worldwide), but it is now undeniably setting the pace for both of those industries in terms of hardware, software, and industrial design."

No shortage of Wi-Fi wannabes / 26 respond to call in S.F. for setting up a wireless network

"MetroFi of Mountain View, one of 26 respondents to San Francisco's request for comments, said it can pull off the feat with even faster speeds than the search engine giant. Other respondents suggest that the city can pay for the network but offer Wi-Fi service free to customers with revenue gained by charging for local advertising. One company suggests basically tacking on wireless to existing DSL outlets."

[SFGate]

UltraDNS unveils shield for Internet attacks - Yahoo! News

"UltraDNS introduced an Internet security shield on Tuesday that the company said would help thwart denial of service attacks against its customers and keep the Web available to hundreds of millions of users worldwide"

VeriSign buys Web company Moreover

"In a move to offer a larger variety of services, VeriSign has acquired content aggregator and distributor Moreover Technologies for about $30 million in cash, the company said Monday. Moreover aggregates content from 12,000 news sources and millions of blogs in 126 countries and 25 languages. That content is tagged and delivered Web sites including MSN, AskJeeves, and the BBC, VeriSign said in a statement. "

[CNET]

The rumors were true.

Troubles at Getty Ripple Through Art World - Yahoo! News

Zoom 'Robotic' Stores Zoom Forward

"Zoom Systems last month announced that it would be accelerating its deployment of the company's automated retail stores, known as Zoom Shops. Found in high-traffic areas like airports in Atlanta and San Francisco, these high-tech vending machines carry such items as Apple iPods, Sony headphones, Virgin Mobile prepaid phones, XM and Sirius satellite radios, HP"

[TWICE]

This company rocks.

Samsung, Apple talks on NAND-chip JV stall

"Samsung Electronics Co.'s (005930.SE) talks with Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL) on joint investment in the production of NAND flash memory chips have broken down, a company spokeswoman said Monday. "

Investing - Where the World's Best Real Estate Investor is Betting Now - FORTUNE

"Tom Barrack is driving a dusty Chevy Suburban around his 1,200-acre mountain ranch near Santa Barbara, Calif. Nestled between the Ronald Reagan estate and Michael Jackson's Neverland, Barrack's spread is a medley of vineyards, pastures, and paddocks."

Cisco adds security to switches, wireless devices - Reuters

"Cisco Systems Inc. is adding security features to its network switches and wireless products, in the networking gear maker's latest push to sell software to help corporations combat spyware, worms and viruses."

Technology - BitTorrent: The Great Disrupter - FORTUNE

"What he came up with was BitTorrent, a deceptively simple program that has grown into the hottest way to download anything bigger than a music file from the legal (like militaryvideos.net's amateur videos of the war in Iraq) to the infringing. It makes pirating a copy of the latest movie out of Hollywood a snap. All it takes is a free download of the BitTorrent software something 45 million people have done and anywhere from a few minutes to a few days."

Yahoo! Podcasts

Goldman says Internet is back, but with provisos - Yahoo! News

"The market for Internet companies to go public is back, the managing director of Goldman Sachs' high-tech group said on Sunday, but only with provisos and with private equity firms increasingly calling the shots."

Flickr: Photos from techstartups

Techstartups flickr badge added.

So sue me

Here's his blog:
So sue me

WSJ.com - Repro Man

"Jon Lech Johansen dropped out of high school after just one year. He lives alone most of the time, except when he stays with his parents in his native Norway. The 21-year-old doesn't drive, rarely goes to parties and says he has no close friends, except his father. He spends about nine hours a day in front of his computer screen.
Yet this reclusive young Norwegian is the man who may be the entertainment industry's worst nightmare. Mr. Johansen, Hollywood executives claim, has done more than almost anyone in the world to ignite the explosion of movie piracy on the Internet, costing them billions of dollars in lost sales. He scoffs at that."

Comcast Surpasses One Billion On-Demand Program Views

"Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK), the country's leading provider of cable, entertainment and communications products and services, continues to change the way people watch television, today announcing that more than one billion programs have been viewed on the company's ON DEMAND service to date this year.

With this announcement, the company is on track to surpass previous expectations that one billion ON DEMAND programs would be viewed in 2005 alone. Last year, Comcast customers viewed 567 million video on demand programs. ON DEMAND views are IP streams of video content that are delivered to customers' television sets via Comcast's next-generation fiber network. Launched in late 2002 in Philadelphia, ON DEMAND is now available in all of the company's major markets."

[Press Release]

PaidContent.org: 'Anything Internet' Looks Strong For 3Q05, 4Q05

"Analyst: 'Anything Internet' Looks Strong For 3Q05, 4Q05: From the weekly Advertising & Marketing Services briefing by Lauren Rich Fine, media analyst, Merrill Lynch: 'Anything Internet likely to post strong Q3 and Q4 results. We previewed Q3 expectations for the interactive ad related stocks and generally speaking expect impressive top line gains. Yahoo (YHOO C-1-9 $33.93) remains our top pick in this sector.' [by staci]"

HOWTO Rip DVD Movies To Your iPod

Zimbra

Zimbra is an open source server and client technology for next-generation enterprise messaging and collaboration. Zimbra delivers innovation for both the administrator and the end-user as well as compatibility with existing infrastructure and applications (both open source and proprietary). Zimbra is open source in order to leverage the collective talent of the greater community, and to ensure investment protection for Zimbra partners and end-users.

Some press about the company here from USA Today:

A company called Zimbra generated tons of buzz at the conference, and it's based on AJAX. Zimbra uses the Web to offer high-end corporate-style e-mail — doing for Microsoft Outlook users what Gmail did for consumer e-mail users.

Zimbra's service blurs the definitions among individual PCs, corporate servers and the Web. Which makes Zimbra a Web 2.0 company.

Plus, by offering corporate e-mail, the company is taking on Microsoft in a way no one dared a few years ago. Which also makes Zimbra a Web 2.0 company.

Mo. May Track Cell Phones for Traffic Data - Yahoo! News

"Driving to work, you notice the traffic beginning to slow. And because you have your cell phone on, the government senses the delay, too. A congestion alert is issued, automatically updating electronic road signs and Web sites and dispatching text messages to mobile phones and auto dashboards. "

But the Missouri project is by far the most aggressive — tracking wireless phones across the whole state, including in rural areas with lower traffic counts, and for the explicit purpose of relaying the information to other travelers.

In fact, it would be the biggest system of its kind in the world, said Richard Mudge, a vice president at Delcan Corp., the Canadian company that won the Missouri bid.

The contract is expected to be completed within several weeks, and a cell phone monitoring system tested and implemented within six months after that. The cell phone provider for Missouri hasn't been disclosed, but Delcan uses data from Cingular Wireless LLC phones in the Baltimore project.

About Us :: gada.be

It's a metasearch service, no matter where or how you view it. gada.be is for anybody with access to the Web and in need of immediate, impartial results.

A bit slow and user interface is quirky. Great business model for 2 guys and a piece of technology leveraging adsense for revs.

Forget Blogs, Print Needs Its Own IPod - New York Times

"And they are half right. Putting print on the grid is a necessity, because the grid is where America lives. But what the newspaper industry really needs is an iPod moment. "

How Bob Iger Saved Network TV - Blog Maverick

But what if CBS sold Survivor episodes the day after it aired like ABC is with Lost ? What if they sold them not just on ITunes Store, but through CinemaNow, MovieLink, Netflix, Walmart Online, wherever.

Think some people would buy them to keep up with the action ? Possibly to sample the show ? Think they might sell more than 75k downloads at $1.99 each ?

Could this move have created a new market that could be comparable in size for some shows and more money for others than the current syndication market ?

ABSOLUTELY. No question about it.

[Mark Cuban]

Downloading mobile content on a cellphone (short clips or live tv) is a comparable to the video Ipod model. Most content accessed on cellphones are short clips of sports or headline news (usually in the morning). A killer app for video ipod is porn - playboy clips - and sports - espn sportscenter clips (in addition to the already mentioned Desperate Housewives episodes). Video ipodding is an evolutionary technology that is pervading the mainstream. However the model is revolutionary and will disrupt different markets - pvr, advertising, networks, etc.

Emap buys internet fashion firm

"Media group Emap has snapped up internet fashion and retail information group Worth Global Style Network (WGSN) for BP140m ($245m)."

London-based WGSN employs 172 staff and reported pre-tax profits of £4m ($7m) in 2004, on turnover of £15m.

Shares in Emap closed 0.9% lower at 806 pence on Friday.

Emap, whose magazine titles include FHM, Heat, Empire and Zoo, said it was buying WGSN from owners Marc and Julian Worth and other private shareholders.
[BBC NEWS | Business]

Om Malik's Broadband Blog: YouTube Gets Sequoia's Cash?

The Web 2.0 funding frenzy is in full effect. YouTube, a self described “Flickr of Video� was one day being told to go raise less than a million dollars and grow the business. A few weeks later the word is that they have raised $5 million from Sequoia Capital at pre-money valuation of $15 million. Well that’s the story these days with Web 2.0 companies. The money gravy train can have its side effects, Mike Rundle argues.

Harvard Names New Head of $25.9 Billion Fund - New York Times

"Harvard University announced today that it had hired Mohamed A. El-Erian, a managing director at the Pacific Investment Management Company, to head its endowment fund, the largest of any university."

Mr. El-Erian succeeds Jack R. Meyer, the hugely successful fund manager for Harvard, who stepped down Sept. 30 after criticism about the multimillion-dollar salaries he and other senior managers were receiving.

When Mr. Meyer took over the Harvard fund in 1990, it was worth $5 billion, and in June of this year, it was valued at $25.9 billion, with growth far outpacing any other university fund. In fiscal year 2005, the fund achieved a total return of 19.2 percent, Harvard officials said today.

Market Pulse: Yahoo mulls buying stake in AOL -- WSJ: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"Yahoo Inc. is considering buying a stake in Time Warner Inc.'s America Online division, according to a report on the Wall Street Journal's Web site Friday, joining a list of potential suitors including Google Inc. , Comcast Corp. [s:cmcsk] and Microsoft Corp. . Google and Comcast's interest in AOL was reported by the Journal earlier this week."

Electronic Arts, Spielberg in Game Sequel

"Electronic Arts (ERTS:Nasdaq - news - research - Cramer's Take) is teaming up with Steven Spielberg to develop original video games, the game-publishing giant plans to announce later Friday. "

[TheStreet]

Light Reading - GPON

"The U.S. RBOCs seem unusually aggressive with their plans to deploy GPON and, with some vendor strategies still a secret, analysts say some of the most obvious names won't necessarily win an upcoming request for proposal (RFP)."

Light Reading - Vonage $1.5B

"VOIP pioneer Vonage Holdings Corp. has heard several acquisition offers in the last two weeks, a source close to the situation says, and has already rejected at least one worth more than $1.5 billion.
Vonage is ostensibly preparing for an IPO, but has been taking a dual-track approach toward liquidity that includes the possiblity of an acquisition. Sources say the N.J.-based company�s investment banker partners have been looking for buyers for some time. (See Vonage Selects IPO Bankers.) "

Light Reading - Ready for 100-Gig Ethernet?

"Is it too early to talk about 100-Gbit/s Ethernet? Apparently not, judging from speakers here. "

[Light Reading]

It most certainly is too early for 100 Gb/s ethernet. Metcalfe points to 40 Gb/s as the next option speed after 10.

USATODAY.com - Venture capital flows to firms targeting ID theft

As fears of identity theft soar, investors are piling into start-ups creating anti-fraud technologies. Venture-capital firms in this year's first six months pumped as much as $70 million into companies selling anti-ID theft software vs. about $101 million for all of 2004, according to the MoneyTree Survey, which tracks venture funding.

Oil Prices Slip Below $63 a Barrel: Financial News

"Crude futures fell Friday, extending earlier losses as supply worries were damped by signs of continued weakness in gasoline demand coupled with reports of sharp post-hurricane recovery in Gulf of Mexico oil operations."

[Yahoo Finance]

It's time to buy crude. Prices will rise above $70 in the next 12 months.

Xbox 360 in a league of its own | CNET News.com

If there's one thing you can say about the Xbox 360, Microsoft's next-generation video game console, it's that this is one impressive machine.

Mystery donor gives Stanford free Yahoo music | CNET News.com

Lucky rich smart college kids

elmo and insurgents

Podcasters prepare to launch video era - Yahoo! News

"Podcasting is on the verge of setting off a video revolution and users of Apple Computer Inc.'s new video iPod can expect a deluge of outspoken commentary, religious sermons and pornography. "

Fox cancels Simple Life - TVSquad

Before


After: They've aged quite a bit since the inaugural season.

Alloy Ventures closes $368M fund: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Alloy Ventures said on Wednesday that it has closed its its fifth venture fund, Alloy Ventures 2005, with commitments of $368 million.
The Palo Alto firm said its total capital under management has now surpassed $1 billion and that it will continue to focus on seed and early-stage investing in information technology and life science companies.

Joining Alloy Ventures this year as general partners are: Michael W. Hunkapiller, most recently president and general manager of Applied Biosystems Inc.; and Ammar H. Hanafi who had worked at Cisco Systems Inc.(NASDAQ: CSCO - News) for eight years, most recently as vice president of new business ventures.

Published October 13, 2005 by the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal

Former Refco CEO Leaves Jail on $50M Bond: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"The ousted CEO of commodities brokerage Refco Inc. has been released from jail on a $50 million bond following his arrest for alleged securities fraud. Authorities say Phillip R. Bennett, of Gladstone, N.J. concealed as much as $545 million in bad debts from federal regulators and investors. Bennett was arrested Tuesday night and released a day later. He was charged in a criminal complaint unsealed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said."

The bankers (Goldman, et al) are f*cked

Japan to Offer VoIP for Cell Phones - Yahoo! News

"Japan is readying a new network for cell phones that will allow people to connect to the Internet to talk over the phone more cheaply and transmit data more quickly. "

How to Keep Your Cool in a Hot Real Estate Market: Money Matters - Yahoo! Finance

Forget floods, fires, and earthquakes. Right now the biggest threat to your home could be you.

Customers First Awards: All Business - Yahoo! Finance

Cisco Forms New Business Unit - Yahoo! News

"Cisco Systems Inc. on Thursday will make its biggest play yet in the application acceleration/WAN optimization space with the launch of new offerings for the branch office and data center and the formation of a new business unit. "

Comcast, Google Said in Talks Over AOL - Yahoo! News

"Google Inc. and Comcast Corp. are talking with Time Warner Inc. about acquiring ownership stakes in America Online's Web portal AOL, a person familiar with the discussions said Wednesday. "

Viacom-iFilm deal cued up | CNET News.com

"Shareholders of privately held iFilm, a video-on-demand Web site, received a letter in the last week announcing the anticipated buyout by media conglomerate Viacom and seeking their approval. The deal is expected to be worth about $50 million, according to sources. "

InformationWeek: Wait Is Over For Many Tech VCs

"Getting a return on that neat new technology company takes time: 5-1/2 years on average. That's the median time between initial equity financing and acquisition, and it's the longest time period in more than a decade, according to an analysis of third-quarter data culled by publisher Dow Jones/VentureOne."

Globes [online] - Interview w/ Mike Moritz

Sequoia Capital partner Michael Moritz tells Israelis to realize that the new world is China and India.

Live Call: Youbet.com Earnings Conference Call (Q3 2005) - Yahoo! Finance

About Youbet.com (NasdaqSC:UBET)

Youbet.com, Inc. facilitates multijurisdictional online pari-mutuel horse race wagering. The company offers live events and focuses on entertainment services, network deployment, and event management via a cross-platform environment. It provides its members with the ability to watch and wager on a selection of live thoroughbred and harness horse racing from North America and abroad through its private and secure closed-loop network. Youbet.com, through its product, Youbet Express, offers its customers interactive and real-time audio/video broadcasts, access to a database of handicapping information, and the ability to wager on a selection of horse races in the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and Hong Kong. The company covers action at approximately 100 domestic and international horse tracks, and offers dozens of races daily. Its Web-based interactive system completes the wagering process, including exotic selections. The company has strategic relationship with Television Games Network. Youbet.com was founded in 1987 and was formerly known as You Bet International, Inc. The company is headquartered in Woodland Hills, California.

DealerTrack sets IPO at $14 to $16 per share

"DealerTrack Holdings Inc., which provides software and data to the automotive retail industry, on Wednesday set its planned initial public offering at 10 million shares at an expected price of $14 to $16 each."

[Yahoo]

T.H. LEE TAKES A BATH AFTER REFCO SCAM

"One of Wall Street's most respected investors has taken a $721 million beating over the last two days as shares of Refco Inc. have plummeted on revelations of an accounting scandal and a Securities and Exchange Commission probe. "

[NY Post]

gHacks.net - Using Google to find Movies

Some days ago i told you how to use the google search to find Mp3 files and Ebooks. Today I will describe how to use similar searches to find movies using google searches.

THE BIG IDEA

Donny Deutsch. Is he for real? Madison Ave's eccentric man has his own show on cnbc, his own ad agency which he acquired in 1984, and is riding on top of the media buzz world (multiple guest appearances - Larry King, cnbc, Letterman, Cramer's show, magazine covers, etc.)

Silicon Valley types aren't ones in the know with ad guys (and in particular, Mr. Deutsch), but this man has seemingly become the household name. Who is the ubiquitous Donny Deutsch and why does he say people are purple.

Microsoft, Yahoo to link instant message services

"Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. are preparing to link together their free instant messaging services as they take on entrenched messaging leader AOL and market newcomer Google Inc., a source close to the companies said on Tuesday. The deal, the first major alliance between two of the Web's main providers of instant messaging, will allow users of Microsoft's MSN Messenger service and Yahoo Messenger to swap instantaneous text messages with each other."

[Reuters]

No doubt this will be a fun battle to watch.

Consortium Forms To Push 802.11n Forward

"A collection of Wi-Fi technology providers has joined forces to speed acceptance of IEEE 802.11n, a standard for next-generation wireless networking that has been slow to progress due to competing industry factions. "

[Yahoo! News]

Airgo wasn't invited to the consortium.

Mologogo adds tracking to any Nextel GPS phone - Engadget - www.engadget.com

Now this is cool.

"Just download Mologogo, a free Java app that works with any Sprint Nextel GPS phone. Once the software is installed on the phone, you can log in to Mologogo’s site and track it using Google Maps."

Wired News: Are You Ready for Web 2.0?

"'Web 1.0 was commerce. Web 2.0 is people,' Mayfield said. "

The presentations included a demo of the well publicized, but as yet unreleased, Flock browser, that aims to make Firefox into a two-way communication tool.

Ian McCarthy of Orb showed the crowd how his software would let them stream media from their desktop using any web-enabled device, without having to worry about the format or bit rate of their movies or music.

Zvents.com unveiled its event finder (which currently covers only the San Francisco Bay Area) and claimed it was far better than the service Yahoo had purchased the day before.

Rollyo, short for roll your own search engine, officially launched at the demo, unveiling a service that lets users build their own specific search engines for travel or politics using Yahoo's search API.

Longtime RSS player Pub Sub unveiled its initiative, Structured Blogging, to help bring the fabled Semantic Web into being.

Wired News: Solar Power Biz Heats Up

New tax incentives at the state and federal level and a boom in construction have boosted the solar energy industry in the past year -- and stocks are reflecting that.

The writer points to a few picks: ESLR, DSTI, ENER, and SPIR as stocks that have run up in concert to oil prices this year.

Linksys and Skype Team Up to Launch New Cordless Handset to Drive Internet Phone Calling: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"Linksys, a Division of Cisco Systems, Inc., the recognized leading provider of voice, wireless and networking hardware for the consumer, Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) and small business user, and Skype, the Global Internet Communications Company, today announced their global relationship that will include marketing a new cordless phone that takes free Skype Internet phone calling off the computer and puts it into the hands of callers."

EETimes.com - Venturing out to find the best VCs

The top 10 venture firms for electronics startups? Tricky. Maybe we could do something easier, like the top 10 rock acts of all time, or the top 10 statesmen in European history.


But the subject really does matter. At a time when the industry is under increasing pressure — globalization, spiraling startup costs, growing demands for "capital efficiency" — funding a company isn't just a matter of writing an executive summary, shopping it around and going home with a check. Whom you find to fund your venture makes a difference.

Buyout firm KKR backs $1.3B Accellent deal - 2005-10-10

"Kohlbert Kravis Roberts & Co. is leading a $1.3 billion buyout of Accellent Inc., which manufactures medical devices on a contract basis for other companies. "

[Bizjournal]

Google Maps' New Direction

"Since its launch in March, Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG - News) mapping feature has unleashed a torrent of creativity. For example, NYsee combines NY traffic cameras, Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO - News) traffic news, and street photos from Amazon.com's (Nasdaq: AMZN - News) A9.com with Google Maps to make your traveling experience a little less hectic. In a more Foolish vein, GeoIndex melds Google Maps with Yahoo! Finance and the S&P 500 to show returns based on where companies are headquartered."

[Motley Fool]

Google plans to make money off its maps through advertising, not surprisingly.

Symantec wants to secure your memories | CNET News.com

"Symantec is looking to use technologies acquired from Veritas Software to provide an Internet-based service through which consumers can automatically back up and remotely access important files such as digital photographs. "

Oracle buys open-source database firm | CNET News.com

"Database heavyweight Oracle has acquired Innobase Oy, a privately held Finnish company with close ties to open-source database company MySQL. "

Yahoo puts news, blogs side by side: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"Yahoo Inc. (NasdaqNM:YHOO - News) said on Monday it will begin featuring the work of self-published Web bloggers side by side with the work of professional journalists, leveling distinctions between the two."

We are getting noticeably more traffic.

EBay's PayPal to buy VeriSign unit for $370 mln - Yahoo! News

"EBay Inc. will buy VeriSign's payment processing business for $370 million and merge it with its PayPal unit as part of a wider e-commerce payment services and security alliance, the companies said on Monday. PayPal said the payment gateway business would generate an incremental $100 million of revenue for it in 2006."

Covad Acquires NextWeb in $23M Deal: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

" Covad Communications Group, a provider of integrated voice and data communications, on Wednesday said it will acquire NextWeb Inc. in a deal valued at $23 million.
The company will spend $4 million in cash and $19 million in stock to acquire the Fremont, Calif.-based Internet provider. In addition, Covad will assume $1.7 million in debt."

[AP]

Old news

WSJ.com - As Podcasts Boom, Big Media Rushes To Stake a Claim

"Like many new technologies, podcasting may be snubbed by the wider public or fail to spawn a profitable business model. But the media industry's scramble signals its determination to avoid a repeat of earlier debacles when companies were slow to deal with new technologies.
Tough lessons from the past include Napster and other music file-sharing programs, which damaged CD sales even as the music industry dallied in offering ways to buy music online because of copyright issues. Another example is satellite radio, with its hundreds of channel choices. Its emerging popularity surprised regular radio companies, who dragged their feet on developing technologies to fight it such as squeezing more channels onto the regular radio spectrum."

Wireless industry comes together for faster Wi-Fi

"A group of 27 technology companies said on Monday they would collaborate on a new, faster Wi-Fi wireless Internet connection standard for computers and other portable devices.
The alliance, dubbed Enhanced Wireless Consortium, joins previously separated camps that were heading towards separate standards for wireless networking."

VeriSign Buying Moreover

"Internet security services company VeriSign agreed to buy online news aggregator Moreover Technologies, which provides real-time content to services such as Ask Jeeves and Microsoft's MSN network.
Sources close to the deal say it is valued at around $30 million. "

[TheStreet]

alarm:clock: VCs Want Bloggers; But The Feeling Is Not Necessarily Mutual

New Scandal for Refco

"Refco, the big New York derivatives broker that went public amid an SEC inquiry two months ago, continues to take shareholders on a wild ride.
On Monday, Phillip Bennett, the company's CEO and chairman, took a leave of absence after Refco realized it was carrying a $430 million receivable from him without labeling it as a related-party transaction. The money was owed by a Bennett-controlled company that assumed some iffy debt owed to Refco, the brokerage said. "

[The Street]

eHarmony Increases Affiliate Sales by 67 Percent Using Commission Junction: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"eHarmony, the internet's premier relationship service, enlists the help of performance marketing experts at Commission Junction, a ValueClick Inc. company (Nasdaq:VCLK - News) to reach new subscribers within the estimated $516 million online dating market (Jupiter Research, February 2005). As part of a multi-channel marketing strategy, eHarmony uses Commission Junction's advanced affiliate marketing solution, CJ Vantage(TM), to drive subscriptions for its service and to reinforce its brand on the Internet. In the first half of 2005, eHarmony saw a 67 percent increase in affiliate sales from the same period last year. "

Hedge Funds Make Biometrics Bet

"Farallon Capital Management and Och-Ziff Capital Management, two of the nation's top hedge funds, have decided to place a bet on Pay By Touch Solutions, a privately held maker of biometrics authentication technology."

Questions Linger About WebMD Despite IPO: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"WebMD's recent sizzling IPO suggests investors are willing to overlook issues ranging from the company losing money to an ongoing investigation by federal authorities."

Same Old UTStarcom: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Another quarter has rolled on by, so it must be time to lower the numbers again and listen to the latest excuses from the telecom equipment maker."

For this quarter, the sales forecast is dropping by about $40 million (from a midpoint of $670 million to a midpoint of $630 million) because of delayed product revenue recognition. Readers might recall a similar problem back in January of this year, though the products and customers involved were different.



The chart is disgusting.

Photos: Frog dissection made easy | CNET News.com

CNET News.com's Blog 100

In a Challenge to TiVo, DirecTV Promotes Its Own Box - New York Times

"DIRECTV, the satellite television operator, is introducing a $30 million advertising campaign on Monday to promote its highly anticipated digital video recorder."

Blog subscribers seek out small universe of sites - Reuters

The Web publishing phenomenon known as the blogsphere has millions of sites but only a small number gain significant audiences, according to data released on Friday.

First Large BPL Network Powers Up - Light Reading

In the year since the FCC gave broadband over power line (BPL) technology the nod, it has had mixed results. Today, it got its first commercial city-wide deployment in the United States.

Ruckus Wireless Launches Wi-Fi Multimedia System

"Ruckus Wireless, Inc. (Ruckus), an innovator in next generation wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) technology, today launched unique new products and technology that forever change how multimedia content will be distributed throughout the home"

[CEN]

Motorola sues PalmSource for "breakup fee"

"Motorola has sued PalmSource, alleging that PalmSource reneged on a buyout agreement and failed to pay an $8.7M 'breakup fee' stipulated in the agreement. PalmSource accepted Motorola's $17.25/share offer two days before agreeing to Access's $18.50/share offer, Motorola's filings in a Delaware Chancery court allege, as reported by the Chicago Sun-Times."

Blog Acquisitions Signal Tipping Point for User-Generated Content

The acquisitions may mark a tipping point in how large media companies value user-generated content.

"There's a wide variety of things that we can do," said AOL Chairman and CEO Jonathan Miller of the Weblogs Inc. acquisition. "User-generated content, it's a big playing field. It's publishing, it's micropublishing, it's blogs…Our vision in that regard is how do we make all these things relate to each other and coexist."

Miller added that he hoped the weblog business would expand in the future, and said that AOL will increasingly create homes for user-generated content.

"The weblogs acquisition is part of that as well," Miller said. "We can take it to print, we can take it to video." He added later: "This is just part of the puzzle."

The AOL and Verisign acquisitions represent a vindication of the blogging format for some observers, who see user-generated content as the news consumption medium of the future.

[Publish]

The two companies were acquired for modest sums of money, indicating 1) that there may not be all much money to be made in blog related companies and 2) further consolidation in the space.

Moon

Pirate

A model presents an outfit by Spanish designer Sadecor during the Spring/Summer 2006 Castilla y Leon fashion show at the Merced Palace in Burgos, northern Spain October 5, 2005. REUTERS/Felix Ordonez

Diamond Ring

This picture released by LifeGem, shows one of their creations: a diamond made from the ashes of cremated remains. LifeGem uses super-hot ovens to transform ashes to graphite and then presses the stone into blue and yellow diamonds that retail for anywhere from 2,700 to 20,000 USD(AFP/LifeGem-HO)

Google Reader

Sergey Brin: No office suite for now | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

During his conversation, hosted by John Battelle, someone from the audience asked Brin about when a 'Google Office,' a web-based productivity suite, would appear. Brin responded: "I don't really think that the thing is to take a previous generation of technology and port them directly, and say can we do the minicomuter on the Web on AJAX makes sense. I'm not saying that's what [Microsoft] Office is, I'm just saying that I think the Web and Web 2.0, if that's what you want to call it, gives you the opportunity to do new and better things than the Office package and more. We don't have any plans [to do an office suite]."

Web 2.0 Conference Day 2: Yahoo! CEO on future of media - ZDNet.com

Very interesting.

Analysts doubt video iPod rumor | TG Daily

As the Oct. 12 date of the next Apple Computer Inc. Special Event approaches, the Mac rumor mill has divided into two camps, one claiming the event will be the birth of a video iPod, the other placing odds against such a device seeing the light of day.

Analysts, though refraining from making predictions, displayed strong skepticism about a video-playing iPod.

RED HERRING | Check Point Buys Sourcefire

Security system developer Check Point Software Technologies acquired Sourcefire, a provider of intrusion prevention and network awareness systems, for $225 million cash on Thursday.

The two companies have signed a definitive agreement, and the transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2006. The boards of both companies, and the shareholders of privately held Sourcefire, have already approved the deal, which includes the assumption of Sourcefire’s stock option plan.

AOL CEO quiet on Microsoft rumors | InfoWorld

America Online (Profile, Products, Articles) Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Miller remained mum, in an appearance at the Web 2.0 Conference, when asked to comment on recent rumors that Microsoft (Profile, Products, Articles) may be talking to AOL about buying it or at least about striking up a partnership with it to boost its MSN Internet division.

Sprint Nextel Sues Vonage, Voiceglo - eweek

Sprint Nextel has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against independent Internet phone companies Vonage and Voiceglo.

Detailed in the suit are seven patents, four of which pertain to systems and equipment for telecommunications control, including how signals are processed through a network, and how user communication is routed into a device. The other three concern the use of broadband in telecommunications systems.

Sprint Nextel Corp. is seeking monetary damages and an injunction to keep Vonage Holdings Corp. and Voiceglo Holdings Inc. from using the technology named in the patents, while the issue of patent rights is being decided. Debra Peterson, Sprint Nextel spokesperson, said that the lawsuit is something of a last resort, since the company has been attempting to resolve the dispute amicably for the past year.

Verisign acquires weblogs.com - $2.3M

Weblogs.com-VeriSign: Details Starting To Emerge; Price Tag $2.3 Million: Updated at 11:50 p.m. eastern to include interview with Dave Winer: VeriSign moved quickly tonight to shift the Weblogs.com story from reports of a sale to what the company will do with its new acquisition from Dave Winer. Michael Graves, the techno-evangelist for the Real Time Web team at VeriSign, appropriately blogged the confirmation, the reasons for the purchase and plans for the site.
Last Thursday, the site processed 1.96 million pings in one day, nearly twice the amount when the two started talking during the summer. With the toll only increasing, the options for Dave as Graves lays them out were to invest significant capital in more robust infrastructure, sell to someone who would do that or death by overuse.

[PaidContent.org]

Broadcom buys Athena Semi in Wi-Fi push

"Broadcom Corp. said Thursday it plans to acquire Athena Semiconductor, a deal that may bolster its chip offerings for mobile television devices and Wi-Fi enabled consumer gadgets. BRCM intends to pay $21.6 million in cash for the privately held firm that designs low-power Wi-Fi chips and mobile TV tuner chips for cell phones. "

[Marketwatch]

The other DVB-H play is Crown Castle Inc, which Cramer is bullish on.

More on AOL/ Weblogs acquisitions - $25M - GeekCoffee

According to reports from this morning, America Online has agreed to buy Weblogs Inc, a network of blog sites on a myriad of topics. The deal will be announced by AOL as early as tomorrow, although for the time being, both AOL and Weblogs Inc are declining comment.

Weblogs Inc currently includes around 80 advertising-supported sites published by more than 100 bloggers. Examples include such sites as Engadget and Autoblog.

LinkedIn and AOL Form Agreement to Enhance Business Communication Via Profile Integration and Presence Services

"LinkedIn Corporation, operator of the world's largest business network, today announced that it has signed an agreement with America Online, Inc. to integrate its AIM(R) service into LinkedIn to provide LinkedIn users with AIM presence information, so that they can easily see when their LinkedIn connections are online and available for real-time communications. This new capability for instant text, voice and video communication will give the more than 3.8 million LinkedIn users a new way to maintain and strengthen their relationships with relevant business contacts, such as clients, business partners and former co-workers. "

[Press Release]

Friendster, myspace have this feature but have built it internally.

Nick Denton: Blog acquisitions

The acquisition of WIN by AOL is exhilirating news, in many respects, most of which I shouldn't list here. For what it's worth, Gawker isn't for sale.

AOL Gets Into Blogging

"Time Warner's (TWX:NYSE - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) AOL is buying Weblogs, owner of 85 blogging sites, to tap into the growing popularity of the media form on the Internet.
Terms weren't disclosed, but Weblogs has 30 million monthly Web page views, according to a statement from AOL. Its sites include the technology blog Engadget and the gaming site Joytstiq. The deal, which is expected to close next week, is worth around $25 million, according to Reuters. "

CentreStone raises $5.5M in VC: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"CentreStone Software Inc., a developer of automated technologies that help businesses manage real estate portfolios and facilities, has raised a $5.5 million round of venture capital."

Python Bursts After Trying to Eat Gator - Yahoo! News

A 13-foot Burmese python recently burst after it apparently tried to swallow a live, six-foot alligator whole, authorities said.

Nanotech golf ball delayed | CNET News.com

The NDMX, a golf ball designed by material science specialist NanoDynamics that will correct for a slight slice or a hook, was supposed to be on store shelves this past spring. The company, however, was able to get prototypes to only a few select golfers in late June. It now plans to release the golf ball in late 2005, according to the company's Web site.

iRobot unveils sniper detector | CNET News.com

On Monday, the company announced a prototype system designed to pinpoint incoming rounds from rifles and mortars, and also to provide surveillance and targeting capabilities. The remote-controlled gear, named Redowl (short for "robot enhanced detection outpost with lasers), is designed to work with iRobot's PackBot combat device.

[CNET]

Snipers can run but they can't hide anymore. Gotcha.

Slowing Is Seen in Housing Prices in Hot Markets - New York Times

Porn Reviews and Erotica Guide from Sir Rodney - the Online Sex Website Review

Company must be milking (not in the crude way) money.

Internet Outsider

Henry Blodget blog

AppleInsider | Apple planning launch of video iPod

Feednation

Yet another news reader:

"Feednation aims to make RSS Feeds usable by everyone. Send your feeds where they need to go. Feed Your Mind."

"Feednation has been built by two men and a dog. We've been in the trenches of Web 1.0 and we're inspired by Web 2.0. This is our contribution."

I wonder what kinda founder shares the dog gets.

Yahoo Inc. Acquires Upcoming.org: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"Yahoo Inc. has acquired Upcoming.org, an online event planning site that's expected to infuse the Internet powerhouse with more content about local communities.
The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company confirmed the deal late Tuesday without disclosing financial terms of the acquisition."

IPTV: Big Potential -- but When?: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"In the good old days, one called the phone company for phone service and the cable operator for TV. Well, times are changing. Reflecting technological innovations, traditional voice-oriented telecom operators are launching TV programming, while cable operators offer voice services."

Tight squeeze for mobile TV | CNET News.com

"TV service on the go is being touted as the next big moneymaker for mobile phone operators--but if too many people tune in, carriers' brand-new third-generation networks could be overwhelmed. "

[CNET]

Read: Qualcomm

PGP set to release encryption package | CNET News.com

Who really needs PGP.

Lycos, Yahoo Pushing to Put Media Online

"Major Internet sites are vying to become more like traditional media companies, setting up online clearinghouses for books, television, music and more in a bid to lure viewers."

[Washington Post]

HP buys bladeless blade server pioneer RLX | The Register

"Troubled blade server veteran RLX Technologies has been snatched up by HP for an undisclosed sum. The two companies announced the deal Monday morning, saying HP plans to use RLX's software for Linux blade server management. This deal must be a huge relief for RLX's current management, which has struggled to find a successful niche for the company's gear. HP expects the transaction to close within 30 days."

[The Register]

A bit old news. I imagine the news was good news for the Texas based company with 36 employees and about 200 customers.

Hynix speeds down NAND Flash roadmap | The Register

"Hynix last week disclosed an aggressive plan to grow its sales of NAND Flash, the type of memory used in digital music players like the iPod Nano.
The South Korean memory giant said it will begin sampling a 70nm 16Gb part, along with 4Gb and 8Gb versions. The company is already shipping 1, 2, 4 and 8Gb chips, all fabbed using a 90nm process."

[Register]

NAND flash is all the rage these days. Just check out Lexar's recent 18% gain on an analyst upgrade.

AGEIA Technologies Completes Round of Financing: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"AGEIA(TM) Technologies, Inc., the pioneer in hardware-accelerated physics for games, announced today its closing of $27 million in new financing. Led by Granite Global Ventures, financing also came from new investor Hercules Technology Growth Capital along with current investors Apex Venture Partners, BA Venture Partners, CID Ventures, HIG Ventures, and VentureTech Alliance."

Symantec ties up BindView buy | CNET News.com

"Symantec plans to acquire compliance specialist BindView Development for $209 million in cash, the security company announced Monday. "

VMware Chief Looks to Stay Ahead of Rivals - Computerworld

Short interview with Diane Greene, CEO at VMWare.

Harvard endowment's returns are top of the class again

"The largest university endowment generated a 19.2% return in the year ended June 30, bringing the total value of the fund to $25.9 billion, Harvard said in a statement on Friday.
Harvard Management Company, the organization set up by the university in 1974 to oversee its investments, has a team of money managers who use a wide range of strategies."

[Marketwatch]

GoshMe - The Web Search Assistant

Ever More Gmail Features - InsideGoogle

Amazon.com: Philips HeartStart Home Defribrillator

Why is this on the front page of Amazon.com

A-1 Quality Products Nano iKeychain Case | iPod Accessory Review

Hot Ipod mini case. Thanks kewlio

DrivAd

It's unclear if this model will be successful. The punch buggy ad car model never really seemed to take off and the AdaptMedia / Taxicab model seems to be doing just ok (lots of upfront capital cost associates w/ those billboards on top of the cabs)

Baidu Facing the Music Over MP3 Function: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

The MP3 search page's popularity has helped make Baidu China's biggest search engine, accounting for nearly half of all queries. It leaves domestic and international competitors such as Google Inc., which last year bought 2.6 percent of Baidu, in the dust.

There's a problem, though. Many, probably most, of those MP3 links connect to pirated copies of copyrighted music and the music companies aren't happy that something so successful is helping rip off their songs.

Google Morphs Into Multifaceted Juggernaut: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

" In just seven years, Google Inc. has morphed from a bare-bones online search engine into a technological octopus that seems to sprout another intriguing tentacle every other week."

News Corp in Trader Classified sale talks - paper

"Rupert Murdoch's News Corp (NWS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) has held talks to buy Amsterdam-based Trader Classified Media (TRDC.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) in a potential $2.5 billion deal, The Business newspaper reported."

Paris and Paris Uncouple - Yahoo! News

She's single to mingle!

Real Estate Investment Trusts Cooling Off - Yahoo! News

"After a long hot run, real estate investment trusts have cooled off in the last few weeks. Which raises the question: Should investors cash out and take their winnings? Or should they stay in the game? "

Yahoo! Blitzes Fantasy Foes

"The Yahoo! Fantasy Sports Web site attracted 5.6 million unique visitors in August, according to comScore Media Metrix. That was about double the 2.9 million registered by Disney's (DIS:NYSE - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) ESPN.Com, the next largest service, comScore said. The market research firm estimates that there were 10.7 million unique visitors that month to all fantasy sites. The figure measures people who view content such as articles about player injuries. "

Indeed, once people go onto a Web site to play fantasy sports, they tend to linger. Fantasy Players spend an average of roughly 30 minutes on the Yahoo! site per visit, longer than people spend on Yahoo! News and HotJobs, according to comScore. Yahoo! saw a 42% increase in 2004 in the number of people who purchased some sort of service related to fantasy sports.

Players also tend to remain loyal to their sites, making them an attractive audience for advertisers. The enthusiasts, who are mostly men, have yearly household incomes of $72,750, about 40% above the national median, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. People spend about $100 a season on entry fees and play in an average of two and a half leagues, according to the association's survey. It estimates that about 13 million adults have played fantasy games in the past year.

[TheStreet]

Flash Insider

Best of weblogs inc.

S&P Snubs Google

"But for once, Google fans were wrong. The stock gave back much of its Friday gains in after-hours trading as S&P tapped homebuilder Lennar (LEN:NYSE - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) and oil titan Chevron (CVX:NYSE - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) to fill the shoes of departing S&P 500 component Gillette. Investors knew a change was coming with Procter & Gamble's (PG:NYSE - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) $57 billion buy of Gillette due to close Saturday. "

[The Street]