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17 Jun 2011 17:20

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Biz: AOL Employee: My experience with them really freaking sucked

  • Errors didn’t matter. Grammatical errors — be they major or minor — didn’t matter. The brainless peons who read the website simply wouldn’t notice. What mattered was getting the ‘product’ published.
  • Former AOL TV writer Oliver Miller • Describing his experience with writing for the online megacorp in the pre-HuffPo days. Miller, who says that he was overworked and had to plow through dozens of stories each week, lost his job in an interesting way: He made a stupid aside about Alec Baldwin that the actor saw, then wrote a tirade about … on HuffPo. (Miller didn’t name the actor, but the story was well-circulated. We even wrote about it a long time ago.) After that point, he claims, editors intentionally put errors in his pieces. Miller lost his job five months ago, roughly around the time the AOL-HuffPo merger was announced. (Disclosure: I used to do freelance for AOL News pre-merger, and my experience wasn’t like this at all. It was stressful, but that’s only because I was writing a daily news blog and also working a full-time job at the time.) source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 Jun 2011 20:41

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Biz, U.S.: Amendment killing ethanol subsidies passes — but bill may not

  • The best way for ethanol to survive is to stand on its own two feet, without spending something we don’t have to get something we’re going to have anyway.
  • Sen. Tom Coburn • Making an argument against handing out ethanol subsidies — which cut gas prices but also cost the federal government $6 billion per year. An amendment to kill the subsidies passed both the House and Senate. In the case of the Senate, it was a straight-up bipartisan vote: 73-27. And a number of groups — including environmental groups — note that the subsidies are no longer needed because the federal government already requires refineries to mix ethanol and gasoline. However, don’t get too excited, budget hounds: The amendment is tied to an economic development bill that likely will not pass. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 Jun 2011 20:11

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Biz, Tech: Pandora’s crappy day: When day two of an IPO totally bombs

  • $16 the amount per share Pandora set its initial public offering for
  • $26 the price the internet radio company reached at its peak yesterday
  • $13 the price the stock closed at today; not looking so hot source
  • » This isn’t a good sign: Generally when a stock has a steep decline immediately after its IPO, it means that the pricing is totally off. In the case of Pandora, the company initially planned to enter the stock market at $7 to $9 per share, but with the current investor fervor over internet companies, the IPO price doubled. Meanwhile, other recently-added tech stocks — LinkedIn and Yandex — have fallen from their peaks, but remain above their IPO prices. In the case of LinkedIn, they’re a solid 52 percent above their IPO price.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 Jun 2011 10:51

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Biz, Tech: One day after its IPO, Pandora’s stock falls below its IPO price

  • yesterday As the latest entrant in the “there’s a new tech bubble” contest, Pandora had an IPO that leaped fairly high above its $16 starting value. Not bad for a company that isn’t profitable, eh?
  • today It appears reality has caught up with Pandora at least a little, as the stock’s price fell below its IPO price in day two of trading, proving that the company is in fact susceptible to the effects of gravity. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

15 Jun 2011 14:22

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Biz: FDA takes steps to make sunscreen more consumer-friendly

  • beforeSunscreen was pretty misleading. The SPF only referred to how well the sunscreen protected against UVB rays, completely neglecting the still-harmful UVA rays. There were also a few false claims on those bottles of sunscreen — mainly those calling it waterproof.
  • afterNew requirements will make sunscreens much more consumer-friendly. SPF will tell how well the sunscreen protects against UVA and UVB rays. Sunscreen won’t be called sunblock, nor will it be called waterproof or sweatproof — no sunscreen really is. source
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

15 Jun 2011 11:03

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Biz, Tech: Tech bubble? Pandora’s IPO kicking butt on Wall Street today

  • $16 the initial public offering price for Pandora, the online radio station that predicts your tastes
  • $20+ its current price on the stock market; it’s a situation that mirrors LinkedIn’s recent IPO source
  • » Another sign of strong investor demand: Pandora’s IPO is more evidence of a growing tech bubble, though Pandora’s on a smaller scale than some of the other companies expected to do an IPO soon. Facebook and Twitter, once they do their IPOs, will likely make this look like a walk in the park. Which makes it understandable why some investors might think that Pandora — which hasn’t turned a profit — might get overshadowed a year or two from now. Pandora also faces some tough business challenges because of their reliance on expensive music licensing — ensuring that that their profit margins remain extremely tight.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

13 Jun 2011 16:38

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Biz, World: Standard and Poor’s downgrades Greece’s credit rating again

  • Greece’s S&P credit rating now world’s lowest: Standard and Poor’s, the international credit rating agency, has slashed Greece’s rating by three levels, from B down to CCC — their lowest rated nation. They also warned that a potential debt restructuring would likely be viewed as a default, which would cause them to cut Greece further down to SD (selective default) for their credit rating, and D for the nation’s debt instruments. So, on top of this bad news, it seems almost assured to get worse before it gets any better. source
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

13 Jun 2011 11:21

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Biz: Apple Store worker really wants unions for some reason

  • what Cory Moll, a part-time Apple Store employee in San Francisco, has come forward with his plan to push for unions for the company’s 30,000 retail employees at 325 retail stores worldwide. Moll started a Web site for his campaign, which, from our vantage point, is currently down (we linked a cached version).
  • why Moll says that the big problems on his end are wages and benefits. He says he makes $14 an hour in a city where the minimum wage is nearly $10 an hour. “Right now what I hope to gain is to get people to start talking about it and get comfortable with it,” he says. Do you guys think he’ll win? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

09 Jun 2011 10:58

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Biz: Citigroup: Yeah, a bunch of bank card numbers got hacked

  • 200k number of customers Citi says were affected by a breach of their system
  • 1% share of Citigroup’s overall North American customer base affected by the hack
  • one number of months it took the company to tell consumers about the incident source
  • » So what was affected? The company says that the hack involved names, bank card numbers and contact information such as e-mail addresses. Not affected were cardholders’ social security numbers, card expiration dates or CVV numbers. All this is of course is awesome to wait a month to tell everyone!
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

08 Jun 2011 14:31

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Biz: Double-dip fuels fear of another Great Depression

  • 48% of people think another depression is coming source
  • » That’s the highest level ever. While the poll question (from a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll) had a slight majority — 51 percent — saying we probably won’t have one, a possible double-dip recession has many folks a little concerned. Obama promises that’s not going to happen. He better hope he’s right — 51 percent of people also said that the economy is extremely important in determining who they’ll vote for.
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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