An outlook on employment, with Michelle Meyer, Barclays Capital economist.

An outlook on employment, with Michelle Meyer, Barclays Capital economist.

A disappointing jobs report was released Wednesday morning and is seen as a precursor to Friday's government jobs report.

CNET: Single girls match bachelors on tech toys

Forrester Research survey released yesterday found that single women rival single men as tech device owners survey released Thursday.
A few interesting statistics:
* Single women prefer laptops while single men prefer desktops.
* Among the adult singles surveyed, 47 percent of women said their next computer would be a laptop, and 29 percent said it would be a desktop, while 47 percent of men said their next computer would be a desktop and 38 percent said it would be a laptop.
* As for hand-held devices, 27 percent of single women surveyed count themselves as owners while 29 percent of single men said they have one, according to the study. Single women, meanwhile, surpassed single men slightly on digital-camera ownership, 78 percent to 76 percent.
* Fewer than 20 percent of single women said they followed technology news, compared to less than 40 percent of single men.

PC World - Top 10 Tech Job Skills in this Market

According to PCWorld, here are the top 10 valuable skills for techies out there. If you're an IT person looking to sharpen your resume pay attention to the top 10 must-have skills below.
"IT remains a real safe and interesting and high-paying place to be," says David Foote, CEO of Foote Partners, which conducts quarterly assessments of IT pay trends in the United States. "The world has embraced IT…because it enables companies to deliver cheaper and better products. I'm pretty bullish on IT."
"IT is counter-trending a lot of what's happening in the general economy," Foote says.
1. Business Process Modeling
2. Database
3. Messaging/Communications
4. IT architecture
5. IT security
6. Project management
7. Data mining
8. Web development
9. IT optimization
10. Networking

CLWR: Clearwire Report Strong on Hyperbole

"Corporation (CLWR) today reported record results in several key business indicators at the end of the first quarter of 2007, demonstrating replicable and scalable market performance as the company expands the reach of its simple, high-speed and portable wireless broadband service.
We should hope the results set a record, as they are the first the company has filed since coming public. As we noted in our earnings preview, “expected to lose money for the foreseeable future, earnings are less important than indications it is not the next Vonage.”
And on that latter front, a company that breathlessly describes its initial earnings report as a “record” and and resorts to adjusting even EBITDA (Earnings Without Expenses, anyone?) is not off to a good start."

Internet radio broadcasters dealt setback - CNN.com

"Many webcasters say the sharply higher royalty fees will put them out of business. Talk of the ruling dominated a one-day meeting of Internet radio broadcasters being held in Las Vegas alongside the annual conference of the National Association of Broadcasters, a group representing local radio and TV stations.
N. Mark Lam, the CEO of Live365 Inc., a privately held company that aggregates audio streams from thousands of radio stations and other small webcasters, said that under the new royalty rules, 'there is no industry.'
Lam, who joined the venture capital-backed company about two years ago, said Live365 just barely broke even last year and had about 4.5 million unique listeners every month."

Where Are The Web 2.0 IPOs? - Forbes.com

"Once a relic of the last stock boom, initial public offerings are back--and tech IPOs are really back. In first quarter of 2007 alone, nine venture-backed tech companies have floated stock, with three tech IPOs during the week before last.

But don't look for photos of Silicon Valley kids in flip-flops grinning after striking it rich on the Nasdaq. The tech companies that have gone public so far this year are, um, mature, if not a little staid--they sell things like networking gear and wireless Internet service.

Meanwhile, the most heavily hyped segment of the tech boom--the glitzy "Web 2.0" companies--has produced a grand total of zero stock offerings. What gives?"