Top 10 Business Tech

Charles Schwab Founding Is Stepping Down

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:25:31 -0600

The online brokerage firm said that it had appointed Walter W. Bettinger II as president and chief executive succeeding the founder Charles Schwab.

Source: NYTimes - Technology

Earnings Yahoo Q2 Numbers Light Revenue Income Below Estimates

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:37:33 -0600

Heres the quick read on Yahoos NSDQ YHOO just-released Q2 numbers. Revenue ex-TAC came in at $1.34 billion up 8 percent from last year but a little behind analyst estimates of $1.37 billion. Adjusted net income was $139 million just shy of the $140 million analysts had been expecting. Revenue on Yahoos O&O network was up 14 percent to $1.01 billion again a little shy of the 15 percent some analysts had been anticipating. Why the miss? Not totally clear yet. CFO Blake Jorgensen touted the companys solid results despite the weak economy. Expect to hear a lot more on this during the call.More to comeContentNexts EconCeleb Seminar examines what drives the economics of celebrity content. July 23 2008 at the Roosevelt Hotel Hollywood. Learn more.

Source: paidContent

MySpace Confirms OpenID Support Launches Data Availability On Flixster and Eventful

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:13:22 -0600

MySpace is rolling out a couple of announcements this morning a day ahead of Facebook&#8217s F8 developer conference. The first is confirmation of our story that they are supporting OpenID although they aren&#8217t releasing any details It&#8217s our belief that they will first issue OpenID IDs and possibly become a relying party later.The company is ...

Source: TechCrunch

Episodic Launches iPhone App Compatibility and Beta Applications

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:25:34 -0600

As you&#8217ve probably noticed we&#8217ve been using a pretty rare platform for our video podcast series Mashable Conversation. The platform is called Episodic and it&#8217s amongst the best I&#8217ve tried and I&#8217ve tried quite a few. I don&#8217t often fawn over a company so I hope you&#8217ll indulge me for a moment. They&#8217ve got one of the most responsive customer service teams I&#8217ve ever worked with with the aim to really make the usage of the system as transparent as possible for the producers.Given that I preach very often about the features and services that video platforms should be providing for their customers when I&#8217m auditioning services for my own use or in this case the company&#8217s usage I send the unfortunate company representative through a long list of hoops they must jump through. Noam Lovinsky was the unfortunate soul assigned to explaining the platform&#8217s capabilities to me.They Have What I NeedMy requirements were that the platform must generate an iTunes compatible podcast RSS feed must have an embedded player that has viral elements remote embedding and such have detailed analytics have dynamic advertisement insertion capabilities and must be able to generate an iPod compatible MP4 file.There are a few platforms out there that we&#8217ve tried that get about 90% of this done but Episodic&#8217s was the first that got 100% and then some. Their transcoding options support a variety of standardized formats and allow you to upload your program in multiple segments so you can change out elements of the show without going back and re-rendering the entire back-catalog for instance you&#8217ve probably noticed that we&#8217ve changed out the intro to something a bit more aesthetically pleasing this week.The ability to dynamically assemble an episode also allows for a whole new level of analytics to get accustomed to. I can run side by side comparisons for instance on the two versions of the introduction to the show interestingly the one with the higher quality seems to perform about 1% poorer in terms of drop-offs.The advertising options in the system are particularly advanced as well. It supports pre-rolls mid-rolls post-rolls and overlays across all of your content. As an added bonus the system also integrates with another favorite video service of mine TubeMogul. After your files have been transcoded on the service you&#8217re able to with a click upload them directly to your TubeMogul account which then of course blasts them out to YouTube Metacafe Yahoo Video and the wide assortment of other embedded video hosting websites out there.Act Now and You Also Get&#8230With all that what else could they pile onto the deal to sweeten the pot? Well pulling the service out of invitation only mode would be great I can&#8217t tell you how many requests I&#8217ve had recently from fellow producers interested in giving Episodic a spin lately. They&#8217re doing a little bit of that today - it&#8217s not exactly open registration but they&#8217re launching a new service that uses some of the transcoding technology they&#8217ve developed.Do you have an existing video feed? Would you like it to have an iPhone compatible website generated around that content so that iPhone users can check it out?Simply fill out the form and set up your transcoding account. And while you&#8217re there you can also apply to be a part of the limited beta on the platform we use here at Mashable.---Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking BlogMashable Conversations Viewer Feedback!Microhoo What&#8217s Really Happening and Do We Care? videoA Meta Discussion on Our Irksome Video Experience videoWant Free Gas? Watch This. videoWhrrl and the Attraction to Location Based Social Networks videoTwitter Identi.ca and July 4thSister Hazel&#8217s Ryan Newell Visits Mashable Conversations video

Source: Mashable

Icahn gives a peek at hammering out Yahoo settlement

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:49:33 -0600

Investor activist Carl Icahn provides a peek into why he reached a settlement with Yahoo over the weekend ending a contentious proxy fight.

Source: CNET News

Yahoo Yang signals to troops proxy fight over

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 07:37:20 -0600

After a couple months of exchanging barbs with investor activist Carl Icahn Yahoos founder and CEO Jerry Yang issues an employee email signaling the battle is over.

Source: CNET News

Are Facebook Ads Going to Zero? Lookery Lowers Its Gaurantee to 7.5-Cent CPMs.

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:25:40 -0600

Nobody can make money on social network ads. Even Google which controls a lot of the inventory on MySpace is having a hard time. How worthless are these ads? Lookery an ad network for social apps on Facebook and elsewhere is renewing a promotion guaranteeing 15 cents per thousand page impressions to ...

Source: TechCrunch

Amazing But True FTC Doesnt Want To Rush Into National Privacy Standards

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:01:24 -0600

While there are plenty of govt agencies that seem to rush into any chance to add more regulations that grant them more power the FTC has a history of being quite reasonable and quite conservative about these things. You may recall that years ago the FTC was against the idea of CAN-SPAM because it would effectively legalize plenty of spam with one FTC commissioner noting that spam should be anything that you dont like -- and legislating against that is next to impossible. Specifically he was worried correctly it appears that in allowing lawmakers to define spam it has merely opened up more possibilities for spamming.That commissioner Orson Swindle is no longer with the FTC but the Commission seems equally skeptical of any sort of national privacy standards noting that any set standards would deal with the market we see today not the markets of tomorrow and that could create serious unintended consequences. Its so rare these days to see federal agencies not leap forward to try to regulate and to actually worry about the unintended consequences of regulating too soon that its rather refreshing. Permalink Comments Email This Story

Source: Techdirt

Glam Media Snags A Google Exec To Head Up Corporate Development

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 02:02:01 -0600

Glam Media has hired Michael Adair most recently Google&#8217s head of North American sales finance as their new VP Corporate Development and Finance. Prior to Google Adair was an investment banker at Lehman Brothers and he has an MBA from Harvard. He&#8217ll be responsible for making investments and acquisitions on behalf of Glam.Glam a women-focused ...

Source: TechCrunch

MedPedia Is Wikifying the Medical Search Space

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:13:23 -0600

The medical industry is one that thrives on innovation and evolution. New procedures medicines diseases and theories are released practically every day. In such an environment the need for a website to reflect and allow for documentation is apparent.MedPedia is a new project currently in development that will offer an online collaborative medical ...

Source: TechCrunch