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06 Apr 2011 11:28

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Biz: Dish Network’s Blockbuster buyout: Good or bad?

  • $320 million the amount Dish Network plans to pay for the bankrupt Blockbuster
  • $228 million the amount the company plans to pay in cash for the video retailer source
  • » A competitive deal? Dish Network, known mostly for its satellite dishes and for being the satellite company that isn’t DirecTV, will earn a competitive advantage by branching out with Blockbuster, which has a large infrastructure, if not money to pay for said infrastructure. For example, Dish Network could also offer Blockbuster’s Netflix-like DVD service on top of their already-robust satellite service. It’s synergy, folks! Another way to look at this: Blockbuster shares were delisted after trading for less than $1 for nearly a year. Netflix shares are trading around $250.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

30 Mar 2011 20:26

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Biz: James Murdoch being prepped for News Corp. takeover?

James Murdoch, the son of Rupert Murdoch, has been promoted to Deputy COO of News Corp. This move is widely considered a step towards his eventual takeover of the company. source
Posted by Chris Tognotti • 0 Comments • Permalink

29 Mar 2011 10:13

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Biz: Supreme Court: Wal-Mart’s worker discrimination case hits today

  • Today’s a fun day in the Supreme Court: See, Wal-Mart, the world’s largest corporation, will be in front of the nine justices, fending off claims that they discriminated against female workers systemically. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The women fielding the claim want to bring a huge class-action discrimination lawsuit against the company. If they succeed at the Supreme Court, the lawsuit, which would cover EVERY female employee — current and former — from 1988 onward, would go forward, costing the company as much as $1 billion. But considering they make billons of dollars each year, it’s really not that much, is it? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Mar 2011 10:18

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Biz, Tech: New York Times’ paywall: Favoring the mobile Web over apps?

  • The fine print in the NYT’s paywall: Have you been wondering to yourself, “Who the heck would pay $260 extra to subscribe to the iPad version of the New York Times?” So have a lot of people. From a distance, the price plan makes little sense and makes the paper nearly as expensive as the dead-tree version (which costs $770 a year for the seven-days-a-week edition outside of NYC). But Poynter’s Damon Kiesow has a really interesting take on the matter which a lot of people haven’t considered: What if the Times wants to discourage mobile app use by pricing them at a premium, specifically with the iPad version? (above pic taken by Robert Scoble — yes, that’s the man’s hand)
  • $385 yearly cost of a weekday subscription to the Times
  • $195 yearly cost of a Web-only Times subscription
  • $260 yearly cost to add mobile to the Web
  • $455 yearly cost to add tablet use to the bunch source
  • » What this all means to you: Now, if you’ve ever used an iPad, it’s pretty clear that the New York Times Web site is as good, if not better than, the NYT iPad app, at least for now. And if they want to further emphasize the tablet-y nature of the iPad, they already have that in the form of Times Skimmer. Furthermore, Apple doesn’t take a 30 percent cut out of Web-based subscriptions. Damon Kiesow’s perfectly apt reasoning, then, is that the NYT is trying to de-emphasize the App Store by pricing people out of that direction. And you know what? He’s right. The NYT Web site will work fine on the iPad. There is an advantage to using NYT’s app on your cell phone, so that’s kept at a more reasonable cost, but the NYT’s plan to focus on the Web over the app? Sneaky.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

25 Mar 2011 13:09

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Biz: Once-powerful Kodak now raising money by patent trolling

  • $1 billion — the amount Kodak wants to shake out of RIM & Apple source
  • » Wait wait, how sad is this? Kodak, one of the great companies of the 20th century — and probably the one most deserving of a Paul Simon tune — has been relegated to patent troll status. Kodak claims that they hold the patent to an image-preview feature commonly used in cameraphones. The company has lost half of its market value in the past year.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

23 Mar 2011 10:49

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Biz, World: Egypt’s stock market opened today, and it was kinda rough

  • 2 months the length of time Egypt’s stock market went without a single session — something about a revolution
  • -9% the stock market’s decline on its first day back, caused in part by foreign investors freaking out source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

21 Mar 2011 20:09

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Biz: Stock market: A huge merger goes a long way to revive stocks

  • whatDespite the extreme uncertainty caused by the Japanese quake and Libya unrest, the Dow Jones Industrial jumped above 12,000 for the first time in nearly two weeks.
  • why The AT&T/T-Mobile merger, silly! In fact, that whole mess seems to have pushed up the entire market for everyone except for Sprint, which fell far today. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

20 Mar 2011 21:30

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Biz: AT&T’s T-Mobile buyout: Infrastructure, antitrust concerns at play

  • 35 million subscribers on T-Mobile’s current wireless setup
  • 100M number of subscribers Verizon has, buoyed by a large infrastructure that nobody can touch
  • 95M number of subscribers AT&T has — if the merger goes through, they’ll top Verizon
  • 40M number of subscribers Sprint has; they were also having merger talks with T-Mobile source
  • » It’s all about infrastructure: AT&T is trying hard to play catch-up with Verizon, which not only has more customers and bandwidth, but also now has the iPhone. The bummer for T-Mobile users is that AT&T’s monthly rates are far higher than T-Mobile’s, which as you might guess has people worried. While T-Mobile has tried to get ahead of talk like this, the concerns are enough that many analysts are warning that the deal won’t go through.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 Mar 2011 11:18

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Biz: Wholesale food costs leap in February, costing us our appetite

  • 3.9% the leap in February’s wholesale food costs source
  • » Why this is a really big deal: Well, see, this is the highest one-month leap in food production costs since, umm … November 1974. So, what caused the increase? We’ll leave that one to the Labor Department: “About seventy percent of the February rise can be traced to higher prices for fresh and dry vegetables, which jumped 48.7 percent,” they write. “Advances in the indexes for meats and dairy products also were major factors in the increase in the finished consumer foods index.” So, umm … yeah. This is not a positive economic trend.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 Mar 2011 10:41

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Biz, World: The single most cringe-worthy quote on Japan you’ll see today

  • Japan has some of its industry curtailed, like auto and steel — but that’s not going to last too long. People are starting to realize that there [sic] economy is not going to be shut down for long — and they’re going to have to start to look for alternative fuel sources.
  • INFA Energy Brokers CEO Brad Schaeffer • Suggesting that Japan will have to switch its energy sources to an alternative source. But Schaeffer means “alternative” in the way one might call a band like Nickelback “alternative” — see, he thinks that Japan should move to oil. “Remember, they need to get their nation back on their feet,” he says. “They aren’t worrying about their carbon footprint so much. They’re thinking we need to get oil here now – so we can get our generators up and running.” While there’s some grain of truth here, we wonder how much of what he’s saying is wishful thinking, seeing that he’s the CEO of an energy-brokering company. Quotes like these? They seriously make us cringe. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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