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17 May 2011 14:01

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Biz: Hewlett-Packard blames Japanese earthquake for problems

  • $5 the earnings per share Hewlett-Packard, the PC maker, expects to make by the end of the fiscal year; their shares are up from May 2010
  • $5.24 the earnings per share Wall Street expected; their stocks fell because of the predicted hardships that lie ahead for the company source
  • » A leaked memo from the CEO is to blame: The memo by Leo Apotheker caused the company’s stocks to fall. He cited the Japanese earthquake and weak PC sales as reasons to reduce hiring and prepare for another rough quarter. Even though their stocks are up from last year, they aren’t meeting market predictions, causing people to sell their shares in the company. Apparently, it’s causing the stock market to slow down overall. Yikes.
Posted by Justin Jones • 0 Comments • Permalink

11 May 2011 23:28

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Biz: Blatant evidence the FCC is in bed with big corporate entities

  • January After a long year of hand-wringing, including much complaining by consumer groups, the FCC approved the merger of NBC Universal and Comcast by 4-1. There was much teeth-grinding.
  • May One of the four commissioners who voted for the merger, Meredith Attwell Baker, has a new job. Wanna guess where? It rhymes with “bombast.” Or, perhaps, “total conflict of interest.”  source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 May 2011 21:50

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Biz: More thoughts on Newseum, front pages and copyright

  • Newseum provides a great service to the internet at large, and journalism in particular. We’ve used their Today’s Front Pages feature many times in the past to inform people about the day’s news, comment on what’s happening, and to inspire people to look a little bit deeper at the stories that inspire and inform us. Like all journalism should. Newseum runs one of the best parts of the entire internet — having every front page in the world at your fingertips is something most people couldn’t even imagine even 20 years ago. As a journalist, it’s something I bought into as well, and I’ve been an active participant over the years. And with the current situation (which involves the organization watermarking pages and enforcing copyright), I feel that I can’t just ignore it and let this issue get swept under the rug. Some thoughts and suggestions to deal with this:
  • On “best practices” Newseum’s talk of not stealing other people’s content online being a “best practice” is totally missing the point of the Internet. Are they using the same Internet we are? Hint: It’s not “stealing,” it’s sharing. Blocking sharing cuts off the hose. By cutting off the hose, you lose influence and focus. You know what needs our attention more than ever? The printed page. Losing that would be a mortal blow to a medium getting less respect than ever.
  • An alternate history To take this in a different direction, Newseum’s stance on this issue ignores a completely different story of the Internet — the growth of open-source content, the expansion of licenses beyond mere copyright, the story of folk heroes like Richard Stallman — all storylines that would not exist if everyone listened to the best practices put forth by the Newseum. Copyright is great and all, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Not on this issue.
  • A request for newspapers We have a solution to this mess that we hope that newspapers at large heed: Consider making your front pages available in a Creative Commons format — one that nips this problem in the bud for good. (This license would be a great choice, because it would make sure that nobody, not even Newseum, could change the content.) Freely-available front pages don’t take away from bottom lines. They add to them. Think about that.
  • » Ultimately, to be clear: Newspapers are taking a bit of a beating as an information source these days. As we switch over to the Web for more and more of our daily lives and our tastes change, projects like the Newseum become more important reminders of where we came from and why these things remain important. We write this because we love what Newseum does, but also because we need MORE things like Frontpages, not fewer.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 May 2011 10:27

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Biz: Arizona ensures the Happy Meal stays unregulated, unhealthy

  • It’s not that we’re trying to make kids fat — clearly we’re not; it’s about how much government intrusion is really necessary.
  • Arizona Restaurant Association president Steve Chucri • Using the small-government argument to fight for one of his group’s major interests: Keeping Happy Meals unregulated. The group helped push forth an Arizona law that bars local governments from doing what San Francisco did — that is, forcing fast-food places to sell healthier food with their toy-laden meals. Yale’s Kelly Brownell, who leads the university’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, offers a pretty good explanation why the food industry is fighting so hard against the policy: “The companies are fearful these laws will impede their opportunity to recruit new customers,” he notes. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

09 May 2011 11:29

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Biz, World: Foxconn’s dilemma: Worker suicides down, but so are profits

  • positive Factory workers at China’s Foxconn plants, where they build iPhones, iPads and a bunch of other iStuff, aren’t committing suicide nearly as much as they were a year ago, thanks in part to reforms put in place after Apple twisted their arm.
  • negative Despite a large jump in revenue for the company, their earnings were down — which, unfortunately, might be a reason for others to not follow suit. Good Magazine suggests we, as consumers, should stop taking advantage of “misery discounts.” source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

09 May 2011 10:27

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Biz, Tech: LinkedIn IPO could prove social media’s heft on the stock market

  • 7.84M number of shares of stock LinkedIn plans to sell during its IPO
  • $35 the high-end price the company’s shares could go for on the market
  • $3Bthe potential value of the company’s IPO — which is kind of a lot source
  • » Getting in early: LinkedIn is one of the first examples of a social media company taking its chances on the stock market, which suggests that Facebook — which is far more widely-used than LinkedIn is — could totally do well in the case of an IPO. The company, which announced its IPO intentions in January,  has filed to go on the New York Stock Exchange under “LKND.”
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

06 May 2011 10:46

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Biz: April jobs numbers: Mostly good this time, but not completely

  • 244k the number of jobs added in April, according to fresh jobs numbers released today
  • 268k the number of jobs added specifically to the private sector, which drove the growth
  • 9% the unemployment rate, which is up slightly from March’s number, 8.8 percent source
  • » Overall, decent news: Economists largely feel that the numbers are positive this time around. One negative of note is the decline of public sector jobs, which fell by 24,000 last month. However, some economists note that certain numbers, such as weak construction numbers and a lack of growth in average work hours, give them pause. Still though, a few negative-looking economic reports from earlier in the week made these numbers look much better than expected.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

04 May 2011 15:01

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Biz: Warner Bros. buys up Rotten Tomatoes, Flixster

  • A conflict of interest on the side? One of the internet’s most popular movie review websites will now be owned by one of America’s major movie and entertainment studios. The acquisition has less to do with Rotten Tomatoes, however, than it does Flixster, a movie review/streaming company that counted RT as one of its subsidiaries — Warner Bros. wanted Flixster to push a competitive advantage against Netflix, and their new ownership of the widely-known review aggregator is a byproduct of that. So, if Warner Bros. makes a piece of utter dreck, hopefully you’ll still be able to see that not-so-fresh “tomatometer” rating. source
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink

03 May 2011 23:27

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Biz: Newspaper pulse check: Why one paper’s circulation skyrocketed

  • The newspaper is doing OK right now. Not great, just OK. In the past six months, that gray newsprint behemoth did OK, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, with the top two papers gaining some ground and most of the top five staying roughly in the same order. However, the way that the group analyzed the data changed this time around — deciding, instead of focusing just on paid circulation, to emphasize “average circulation,” which includes separate editions under the umbrella of a certain brand. The numbers caused one paper to rocket into the top five and one to fall out. See if you can guess by the numbers below:
  • 2.1 million daily circulation for the top-ranked Wall Street Journal
  • 1.8 million average daily circulation for the still-second-place USA Today
  • 916,911 average daily circulation for the freshly-paywalled New York Times
  • 605k average daily circulation for the Los Angeles Times
  • 577k average daily circulation for the San Jose Mercury News
  • 550k average daily circulation for the Washington Post source
  • » A few things of note: If you guessed that the San Jose Mercury News benefited greatly from the change in data, you’re correct — MediaNews treats each newspaper on this page as an “edition” of the Mercury News (which seems a little number-inflating). Other notes: This data covers the daily circulation for the past six months — a period which only includes a tiny bit of the New York Times’ post-paywall circulation (so come back in six months to see if it was a success). But e-editions are doing quite well, especially for the Wall Street Journal and Detroit Free Press. One last thing: The numbers only cover paid newspapers, not free ones. (photo by Brent D. Payne)
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

01 May 2011 16:04

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Biz: PlayStation Network breach could cost credit card firms millions

  • $1.5B the amount the PlayStation Network data breach could cost Sony, according to analysts
  • $300M the amount Sony’s data breach could cost credit card firms if consumers replace their cards
  • $3-$5 the amount it would cost card companies to replace a card affected by the breach source
  • » A big number, but small potatoes: The credit card industry makes a lot of money each year, and a $300 million charge, while not insignificant, is a drop in the bucket. In 2010, banks that distributed Visa and MasterCard cards — excluding American Express and Discover — made $2.12 billion in after-tax profit. So even if the potential cost is high, they could handle it.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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