Sunday, May 31, 2009

In Battle For Web Traffic, The Left Is Beating The Right

 


imageBy David Kaplan - Wed 27 May 2009

 

The Dems are controlling more than just the White House and Congress.

 

They’re also collectively winning the battle for traffic among political sites. According to the latest comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) numbers, left-leaning sites attracted 6.4 million uniques in April, while the major blogs on the right 4.8 million.

 

The right is not without some bragging rights. Individually, the right had one more site in comScore’s top 20 political blog sites than their left wing counterparts (nine to eight), and many of the conservative sites, like MichelleMalkin.com, had enormous growth, while liberal stalwarts like DailyKos and MyDD appeared to be dropping uniques year-over-year.

 

However, since these are comScore numbers, websites are sure to disagree with the findings. TalkingPointsMemo, for example, tells me the 203,000 uniques that comScore assigned to them is way off; they claim to have had 1.4 million in April.

 

There was one main reason the liberal sites collectively came out ahead: Huffington Post’s dominant 5.6 million uniques, which dwarfs the number-two site Drudge Report’s 1.7 million monthly visitors.

 

That’s a gap that conservative reporter and TV pundit Tucker Carlson is angling to fill with his new political news site The Daily Caller, which The Hill described as a right-wing version of HuffPo.

 

For his part, Carlson told a conference that he plans to position it as a “general-interest newspaper-format style site” that will focus on the Obama Administration. I spoke briefly to Carlson today about the project, which he said is scheduled to launch in three weeks.

 

He declined to offer any further details on whether the site would be ad supported or where the investment money was coming from.

 

Photo Credit: The Situationist

 

Source: http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-in-political-site-traffic-wars-libs-win-tucker-carlson-readies-right-st/

 

Posted via web from Global Business News

Bing's Meaning: But It's Not Google


by Michael Arrington on May 28, 2009

 

Everyone knew today was the day that Microsoft was going to launch their new search engine. Everyone’s been talking about it for months, and the press and marketing efforts were carefully tailored to maximize the impact. Thursday, May 28, 2009 was supposed to be Microsoft Bing Day.

 

A little after 8 am this morning Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer  himself took the stage at the exclusive All Things Digital conference near San Diego, California and announced to a few hundred elite executives that Microsoft would soon be releasing its new search engine, and that it would be called Bing .

 

One problem right off the bat: the Bing.com site wasn’t live. And since press didn’t know the name until Ballmer said it, it took a while for the news to spread.

 

Another problem: A team of Google engineers based in Sydney was simultaneously announcing a stealth project 4+ years in the making called Wave. And it wasn’t being announced to a select few top business executives. Instead, the team that created it was showing it to 4,000 developers at the Google IO conference in San Francisco, California.

 

You know that scene in the Lord Of The Rings movie where the huge eye of Sauron on top of that mountain swings its view from the alliance troops massed at the Black Gate of Mordor over to the real action, Frodo with the Ring at the Cracks of Doom?


That’s basically what happened today. The eyes of the world, and the press , swung from San Diego to San Francisco as they realized what was happening. And what was happening was this: Google stole Microsoft’s thunder with one of the most ambitious and exciting products the tech world has seen in a long while.

 

At the end of the Google Wave presentation, 4,000 developers stood up and cheered like nothing we’ve seen outside of a Steve Jobs keynote. That picture above isn’t the crowd of gray haired execs cheering Bing. It’s a mass of engineers going wild over a new open source communications platform from Google. And yes, that guy on the right was literally waving his laptop in the air in excitement.

 

The fact that everyone in attendance was still glowing from a free Android G2 phone that was handed out the day before didn’t hurt, either.

 

So what happened? Well, the company that will do no evil will certainly engage in a little stealth black ops mission when its required. Google knew full well exactly when Bing was going to launch. And they carefully planned the Wave launch to occur just minutes afterwards. They knew the crowd was ready for something cool. Not only did they have that free phone, but the day before Google VP Engineering Vic Gundotra told the crowd that there would be a big announcement the next day.

 

People were ready and willing to be wowed.

 

And while Wave certainly deserves every bit of positive attention it got today, the fact that it’s an open source project didn’t hurt, either. San Francisco engineers love open source like east coast liberals love Obama.

 

Microsoft never stood a chance. As far as the San Francisco developer crowd is concerned, Bing stands for “But It’s Not Google.”

 

Source: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/28/what-just-happened-thursday-was-supposed-to-be-bing-day/

Posted via web from Pulse Poll

Searching for the Meaning of Bing


bing_c_cmyk

POSTED BY LEVI SUMAGAYSAY ON MAY 28TH, 2009

 

Microsoft’s new/revamped search engine, Bing, will be released June 3.  It promises to deliver more than the customary list of results when called upon to do a search; it is “more of a decision engine,” according to Microsoft SVP Yusuf Mehdi.

 

There will be inevitable exploration of the meaning of the moniker. (Bing has a certain ring to it. It’s much better, of course, than the boring “Live Search.”) Plus there is the bigger question of whether Bing will make a dent in Google’s dominance. But search for clues to another issue Bing brings up: Will it end the Microsoft-Yahoo search flirtation?

 

By some accounts, Bing seems like it would be more useful than a Google or Yahoo search. If you’re searching for something you’d like to buy, for example, Bing theoretically will serve up reviews, as well as places to buy the item and related accessories, laid out in a prettier and more organized way than just a simple vertical list of links.

 

Search for a movie star, and Bing shows you ways to refine your search by movie, images, or quotes, among other things. Below that, you get a list of related searches, such as searches for who that actor might be dating. Bing supposedly will add more features as it continues to try to provide more context with each search.

 

A possible positive for Microsoft: The depth of the searches seems to offer more opportunities for ad revenue. CEO Steve Ballmer has stressed the importance of search and advertising — Google’s bread and butter — in the past.

 

Of course, some people think simple is best, which is part of why Google’s so successful. Early impressions suggest Bing will lure some people who want to achieve a specific goal when doing a search, but that users’ trust in Google to bring them the most relevant results in the most basic of manners won’t wane. The trick will be to get people to think of Bing, too, when they think they might want an enhanced search. Microsoft will be spending a lot of money on the Bing branding campaign, CEO Steve Ballmer said today.

 

So this brings us to what this means for the long-running Microsoft-Yahoo partnership possibility. Is it still going to happen? After all, would Microsoft invest so heavily in Bing if it really thought a deal with Yahoo was imminent?

 

Also, some think that Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s statement yesterday that the Sunnyvale company would consider selling search for “boatloads of money”really meant that she doesn’t want to sell. (See Gems from D7: On Yahoo, on the iPhone.) As for Microsoft, it will probably be concentrating its search efforts on rolling out Bing and making it sing.

 

Source: http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2009/05/searching-for-the-meaning-of-bing.html

Posted via web from Global Business News

World's Undiscovered Gas and Oil is Largely North of Arctic Circle


Arctic oil

ARCTIC OIL: The estimate comes at a time when a shrinking Arctic icecap due to global warming is making exploration more feasible. (Nabil Najjar / For the Times/ October 3, 2007)

From the Los Angeles Times

The most likely place for oil in the Arctic is off northern Alaska in the Chukchi Sea, the researchers report. But conservationists warn of drilling in the fragile environment.

By Margot Roosevelt

May 29, 2009

 

A full 30% of the world's undiscovered gas and 13% of its undiscovered oil are estimated to be located north of the Arctic Circle, U.S. Geological Survey researchers said in a paper published Thursday in Science magazine.


The estimate is relatively small compared with known reserves in the major oil-exporting countries, but it is likely to greatly benefit Russia, which has the largest territory in the region, the researchers noted. However, they said, the most likely place for oil in the Arctic is off northern Alaska in the Chukchi Sea.

The study, presented by Donald L. Gautier and colleagues, is the first detailed, peer-reviewed and geologically based assessment of natural resources in that region. Most of the undiscovered oil and gas will be found underwater, on continental shelves, the researchers said.


The estimate comes at a time when a shrinking Arctic icecap due to global warming is making exploration more feasible. Tensions have risen among nations around the Arctic Circle over how the resources should be exploited.

 

Republican Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has endorsed increased exploration. But conservationists warn that plunging drilling pads into the frozen Beaufort and Chukchi seas and in Bristol Bay could open the door to a catastrophic oil spill in one of the most fragile environments on Earth.

 

Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-na-arctic-oil29-2009may29,0,3651730.story?track=rss

 

Posted via web from Global Business News

Went Walkabout. Brought Back Google Wave.


sound_wave

5/28/2009 09:15:00 AM

Back in early 2004, Google took an interest in a tiny mapping startup called Where 2 Tech, founded by my brother Jens and me. We were excited to join Google and help create what would become Google Maps. But we also started thinking about what might come next for us after maps.


As always, Jens came up with the answer: communication. He pointed out that two of the most spectacular successes in digital communication, email and instant messaging, were originally designed in the '60s to imitate analog formats — email mimicked snail mail, and IM mimicked phone calls. Since then, so many different forms of communication had been invented — blogs, wikis, collaborative documents, etc. — and computers and networks had dramatically improved. So Jens proposed a new communications model that presumed all these advances as a starting point, and I was immediately sold. (Jens insists it took him hours to convince me, but I like my version better.)


We had a blast the next couple years turning Where 2's prototype mapping site into Google Maps. But finally we decided it was time to leave the Maps team and turn Jens' new idea into a project, which we codenamed "Walkabout." We started with a set of tough questions:

 

Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication — email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?

 

Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum? How simple could we make it?

 

What if we tried designing a communications system that took advantage of computers' current abilities, rather than imitating non-electronic forms? 

 

After months holed up in a conference room in the Sydney office, our five-person "startup" team emerged with a prototype. And now, after more than two years of expanding our ideas, our team, and technology, we're very eager to return and see what the world might think. Today we're giving developers an early preview of Google Wave.

A "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

 

Here's how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

As with AndroidGoogle Chrome, and many other Google efforts, we plan to make the code open source as a way to encourage the developer community to get involved. Google Wave is very open and extensible, and we're inviting developers to add all kinds of cool stuff before our public launch. Google Wave has three layers: the product, the platform, and the protocol:

 

The Google Wave product (available as a developer preview) is the web application people will use to access and edit waves. It's an HTML 5 app, built on Google Web Toolkit. It includes a rich text editor and other functions like desktop drag-and-drop (which, for example, lets you drag a set of photos right into a wave). 

 

Google Wave can also be considered a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services, and to build new extensions that work inside waves.

 

The Google Wave protocol is the underlying format for storing and the means of sharing waves, and includes the "live" concurrency control, which allows edits to be reflected instantly across users and services. The protocol is designed for open federation, such that anyone's Wave services can interoperate with each other and with the Google Wave service. To encourage adoption of the protocol, we intend to open source the code behind Google Wave. 

 

So, this leaves one big question we need your help answering: What else can we do with this?

If you're a developer and you'd like to roll up your sleeves and start working on Google Wave with us, you can read more on the Google Wave Developer blog about the Google Wave APIs, and check out the Google Code blog to learn more about the Google Wave Federation Protocol

If you'd like to be notified when we launch Google Wave as a public product, you can sign up at http://wave.google.com/. We don't have a specific timeframe for public release, but we're planning to continue working on Google Wave for a number of months more as a developer preview. We're excited to see what feedback we get from our early tinkerers, and we'll undoubtedly make lots of changes to the Google Wave product, platform, and protocol as we go.

We look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Posted by Lars Rasmussen, Software Engineering Manager

 

Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/went-walkabout-brought-back-google-wave.html

Posted via web from Global Business News

GigaOM To Charge For Annual Subscription Service

GigaOM

By David Kaplan - Thu 28 May 2009

 

Tech news blog network GigaOm has unveiled a $79 subscription service, that will offer exclusive research and analysis, the blog’s founder Om Malik (pictured, right) said in a post. The service, dubbed GigaOM Pro, is debuting with 17 research pieces that are available for download as PDFs. GigaOM Pro is divided into four verticals around Green IT, Infrastructure, the Connected Consumer, and Mobile.

 

The plan for a paid subscription service took shape three years ago, Om wrote, the company was embarking on a funding round. Even in 2006, when online advertising was growing at substantial double digits, Om said he realized that ad-support alone wouldn’t cut it. Since then, it has expanded into the conference business and several events. The service is using WordPress’ BuddyPress social platform to run the content.

 

ReadWriteWeb: In an interview, Om told RWW’s Richard MacManus that GigaOM Pro’s Analyst Network will operate in tandem with the blog’s content. As the analysts provide the data, the blog will pick up from there and “connect the dots.” It also represents Om’s view that, as media companies evolve, analysts and bloggers will need to develop a closer link, if readers are to be expected to pay for content.

 

Photo Credit: Flickr/jyri

 

Source: http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-gigaom-to-charge-for-annual-subscription-service/

Posted via web from Global Business News

Mark Cuban Sues SEC Over Insider Trading Documents

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, front, walks out of a hearing accompanied by members of his legal team at the Earle Cabell Federal Courthouse in Dallas, Tuesday, May 26, 2009. Cuban wants an insider trading lawsuit against him to be thrown out, but he'll have to wait for a judge's decision.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cu… 

AP - May 26, 5:18 pm EDT

By SCHUYLER DIXON,

Associated Press Writer

 

DALLAS (AP)—Mark Cuban sued the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday for access to documents detailing the insider trading case against theDallas Mavericks owner.

 

The Dallas billionaire filed requests for records in December under the Freedom of Information Act. That was a month after the SEC brought a civil action against Cuban, accusing him of selling shares of Internet search engine company Mamma.com after receiving confidential information about a private offering.

 

Cuban’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, claims the SEC improperly rejected some requests, didn’t respond quickly enough to appeals of rejections and failed to conduct adequate searches for some records.

 

Cuban provided a copy of his lawsuit to The Associated Press after it was reported by The Dallas Morning News. He didn’t comment further. An SEC spokesman declined comment.

 

The lawsuit said Cuban sought records of investigations involving Copernic Inc., the name for Mamma.com established two years ago, and an array of current and former Cuban enterprises, including the Mavericks, HDNet and Broadcast.com Inc.

 

According to the lawsuit, the SEC missed deadlines to respond to appeals of several rejected requests, leaving Cuban no choice but to sue.

 

“Because the SEC has failed to timely respond to Mr. Cuban’s FOIA/Privacy Act appeals, Mr. Cuban has exhausted his administrative remedies,” the lawsuit said.

 

The SEC was vague in rejecting many of the requests, the lawsuit said, and sometimes claimed investigations were ongoing when the agency was on record as having completed the probes. The lawsuit also cited President Barack Obama’s executive order from January declaring that federal agencies “should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure.”

 

The lawsuit was filed two days after Cuban appeared in federal court for a hearing on his motion to have the case dismissed. The hearing allowed attorneys to articulate arguments previously stated in motions and briefs since the suit’s filing in November.

 

U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater didn’t immediately rule on the motion.

 

The SEC alleges that Cuban avoided a $750,000 loss by selling his 600,000 shares, which represented a 6.3-percent stake in Mamma.com, after executives told him of plans for a private offering. Cuban’s legal team doesn’t acknowledge those facts as true. But even if they are, Cuban’s lawyers contend, he didn’t engage in insider trading because he wasn’t legally an “insider.”

 

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=ap-markcuban-insidertrading&prov=ap&type=lgns

Posted via web from Global News Feed

Google Wave Could Transform Net Communications

May 29th, 2009

 

What do you get when you use e-mail, instant messaging, blogs, wikis and other collaboration tools as a starting point for an entirely new communications model?

 

The answer is Google Wave.

 

Google previewed its latest Web-based application at the Google I/O developer’s conference this week. The Google Maps team, lead by Lars and Jens Rasmussen, developed the application to allow people to communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps and other tools.

 

Wave is the Rasmussens’ answer to questions like: Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the Web today, in one smooth continuum?

 

And what if we tried designing a communications system that took advantage of computers’ current abilities, rather than imitating nonelectronic forms? It took the brothers two years to come up with some answers that take the form of Wave.

 

Catching the Wave

 

In Google Wave you create a wave, which often starts with instant messaging, and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets and even feeds from other sources on the Web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly.

 

“It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave,” said Lars Rasmussen, a software engineering manager at Google.

 

“That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use ‘playback’ to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.”

 

Wave is an HTML 5 app, but it can also be considered a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other Web services, and to build new extensions that work inside waves.

 

Source: http://www.techeroid.com/2009/05/29/google-wave-could-transform-net-communications/

 

Posted via web from Pulse Poll

The Future of US Capitalism

Published  by Davide Accomazzo, Adjunct Professor of Finance

 on May 4, 2009 in America's Financial CrisisEconomics and Public Policy

The financial turmoil of the last eighteen months has brought to everyone’s attention the problems and dichotomy of our present monetary and financial systems. While we are now dealing with the consequences of too much credit, it is also important to note that a system without credit (and—much to the delight of the populists—without bankers) would be a much poorer and less innovative social system.

So far, the attempted solutions suggested have varied from more leveraged credit to the substitution of the fiat currency system and the central bank with a gold-linked scheme.

 

The problem with most of these suggestions is a massive confusion about how the U.S. system really works, how it should work, and how we would like it to work (and here it gets really problematic as every individual interest invariably jockeys for a better position).

The issue with a fiat currency system is that it is backed by the credibility of the government and the central bank, which should be acting independently as a guardian of the currency. Governments have inherent conflicts of interest and may feel pressured to regularly weaken the currency as a means of veiled taxation; other sectors of the population will also look favorably on consistent inflation to reduce the burden of borrowing. The central bank is supposed to act independently to counterbalance these inherent social and political dynamics.

Unfortunately, in the case of the U.S. and many other countries, the central bank, is hardly independent or focused on one true objective of financial stability. In reality, a central bank’s independence is very limited; true independence would require practically no accountability and a large degree of secrecy, which comes, of course, with its own problems.

 

The fine balance between a government’s and a society’s pull toward credit excesses and the countervailing force of the central bank is the key to successful economies.

One way for the U.S. to begin heading back in that direction would be to simplify the objectives of the central bank (i.e., the Federal Reserve) and eradicate its current internal conflicts between credit management, currency management, growth management, price stability and banking supervision. In other forums, I have advocated that system supervision and price stability (including currency) should be the only focus of any central bank.

 

The Federal Reserve’s obsession with uninterrupted growth and constant business cycle management is a political objective completely inconsistent with its true existential mandate.

Recent populist calls for the dismantling of central banks around the world as a solution to this problem are very disingenuous and they miss the level of complexity our system has reached over decades. A potential return to some sort of gold standard and the eradication of the central bank will accomplish nothing positive. A financial system built on credit is far superior to no credit at all, but because of the system’s inherent instability, there is a great need for fiscal management and strict regulatory supervision.

 

The answer is a better, more functional and less sclerotic central bank—not a system left to its own devices.

The unfortunate truth (and yes I do believe in free markets and in maximum rational levels of freedom in every aspects of society) is that full free markets have never existed and cannot exist for two reasons: the natural tendency of humans to jockey for personal (or group) interests and the reflexivity of market action, which distorts self-adjusting dynamics.

 

As far as having a gold-linked currency goes, the shiny metal has had its chances over history and has invariably failed to function in the best interest of society at large.

The fact is that gold is subject to the same credibility issues of governments and central banks (that is, the idea of its value is still based on collective faith). Gold failed during the times of the Spanish empire, which drowned in a sea of inflation, during the California gold rush, and during the Great Depression. Gold is certainly not the answer at a systemic level, but it is an accepted temporary hedge, and until better checks and balances are found in our present system, it is an asset that deserves a small place in most portfolios.

Socialism (and certainly communism) in classic terms were concerned with gaining control of the means of production; nowadays that is a trivial issue and quite impossible to accomplish when most means of production are held offshore and a larger percentage of the economy is represented by services. The key to today’s socialism is control of capital creation—the unholy union of governments and central banks. Gov-centralbank-ism?

 

The future of capitalism will depend on our ability to clarify the objectives of central banks as well as America’s ability to create modern institutional checks and balances.

 

Note: The current fiat monetary system is based on a currency that is backed simply by faith and trust in the government. In other words, the currency is not at the present time convertible into anything—it is just a piece of paper that tracks relative interest rates and rates of growth among countries. Ultimately, currency value rests on the faith investors have in the government that the real value will not be debased. In the past, currencies have been linked to commodities (usually gold or silver) with a conversion ratio—this served to limit government actions to inflate the money supply and debase real purchasing power. During this economic mess there have been many voices that have invoked a return to some sort of gold standard. And as the everyday business of economic life is being thrown into question, calls for a move to some kind of socialism and away from the supposedly free markets are being made.

 

Source: http://gbr.pepperdine.edu/blog/index.php/2009/05/04/857

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Euro Zone Interest Rate Falls to Zero

By MATTHEW SALTMARSH

Published: May 29, 2009

 

PARIS — The annual inflation rate for the euro area was unchanged over the year to May, compared to a 0.6 percent gain in April, the European Union statistics agency said Friday in a preliminary report.

 

A breakdown of the data is not yet available, but analysts said the drop was largely attributable to lower energy and food price inflation, while core inflation, which excludes those volatile prices, probably also fell noticeably.

 

The annual rate of zero percent in May was below analyst expectations of a rise of 0.3 percent, and was the lowest level of inflation since Eurostat started producing comparable data in 1996.

 

The rate is likely to dip into negative territory in coming months, due to the high base comparison from mid-2008, before turning positive late this year and rising further in 2010, said Martin van Vliet, an economist at ING in Amsterdam.

 

“The severe contraction in activity has created a huge margin of spare capacity in the economy, which will exert strong downward pressure on core prices going forward,” he said. “There remains a real risk that the euro zone will see more than a whiff of deflation.”

 

In Germany, Europe’s largest economy, consumer prices unexpectedly posted the first annual decline since at least 1996 this month. Growing unemployment and feeble wage increases are also likely to keep a lid on any significant rise in prices for some time, analysts said.

 

The most powerful German union, IG Metall, reached a wage deal in November for a 4.2 percent rise through April 2010. The deal by the union, which represents 3.6 million workers at companies like Siemens and Daimler, consisted of two pay rises each of 2.1 percent, starting Feb. 1. The second increase was due to take effect starting May 1, but many firms, in agreement with unions, are deferring it.

 

Figures from the European Central Bank released Friday showed a further decline in monetary and credit growth. Annual growth in M3, a broad measure of money supply, posted its sixth consecutive monthly decline in April, falling to 4.9 percent from 5 percent in March.

 

Annual growth in bank lending to the private sector also continued its decline in April, falling to 2.4 percent from 3.2 percent, with annual growth in lending to the household sector and the non-financial corporate sector also slowing.

 

Still, the E.C.B. continues to argue against the likelihood of a deflationary spiral taking hold. The bank’s vice president, Lucas Papademos, said this week that “temporary disinflation does not constitute a persistent, broad-based and self-sustaining decline in the overall price level.”

 

The bank’s president, Jean-Claude Trichet, said this month that the inflation gauge would accelerate again in the second half of the year. The E.C.B. aims to keep inflation just below 2 percent.

 

Separate data released Friday showed that retail sales in Germany unexpectedly grew in April, raising hopes that consumer spending could help support the economy after a record slump in gross domestic product in the first quarter.

 

Sales rose by 0.5 percent from the previous month in seasonally adjusted terms, the Federal Statistics Office said. Year-on-year, sales fell by 0.8 percent.

 

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/business/global/30euro.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Posted via email from Global Business News

Five Reasons to Be Terrified of Google Wave

 


wae

BY CHRIS DANNEN

Fri May 29, 2009 

 

Google Wave, announced today at Google's I/O Developer conference in San Francisco, is a hybridized email system that will fundamentally change the way we think about electronic messaging. This is foreboding for at least five reasons.

 

1) Participating in a Wave is a little like an email chain, and a little like instant messaging; you can embed documents, Google Web Elements, photos and other multimedia, and the whole bailywick is presented as one stream of conversation. People can jump in or jump out at any time, and they can track back to see how a conversation got started. 

 

The advantage, Google says, is "rich formatting." But this "formatting" is also a lot like instant message formatting. We all know what that'll mean: short, declarative sentences; loss of all punctuation, greetings, and email signatures (with important info like phone numbers); and conversations that are much longer than they should be. Dislike long billowy emails? You'll despise the bizarre, choppy prolixity of long waves.

 

2) "With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time." That's what Google says. Am I the only one who writes an email, then revises it for tone and clarity? It's creepy enough that other people know when I'm typing on Gtalk. Now they can see what I'm thinking as I try out sentences?

 

3) Every college student is familiar with the next liability. Email chains--the closest thing to waves at this point--are all fun and games until someone CC's the wrong person, like a parent, relative, boss or overly-sensitive co-worker. "Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process," Google says. That'll make keeping track of participants a lot harder. Subtract the aforementioned opportunities to self-edit, and you have a social trainwreck ready and waiting.


Picture 1

 

4) Google Wave, like all fun new toys on the Web these days, has its own API, aspiring to be a platform as well as a tool. It has "robots" that enable live functions like searching, linking and translation, and a wave can be embedded in a site to make things more "collaborative," according to Google.

 

Leaving aside spam for a second--which I realize is no trifle--what is it with platforms? How many of these things can we have before we all join hands across America? Any company with moderately ambitious developers is already trying to handle smartphone apps, Facebook's API, Twitter, widgets, and who knows how many other endeavors. Do we really need to throw another silo of communication on the pile?

 

5) The worst thing about Wave: I'm going to try it anyway. Google's apps are roundly excellent, with the exception of maybe Picasa, which is shamed by Flickr.

 

Why? I'm curious how Wave survived amidst a new, post-recession Google that cuts funding for pie-in-the-sky projects; obviously, Google really believes in Wave, and the search engine giant is rarely wrong about these things.

 

When Wave goes live "later this year," you can be the first to know--and resent--by signing up here

Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chris-dannen/techwatch/five-reasons-be-terrified-google-wave


 

Posted via web from Global Business News

Facebook’s New Russian Shareholder Planning Its Own IPO

 


image

By Robert Andrews - Thu 28 May 2009

 

Facebook may not be rushing to go public, but Digital Sky Technologies, the Russian investment fund that just paid $200 million for 1.96 percent of the social network, does plan to IPO.

 

CEO, co-founder and former Mail.ru chief Yuri Milner tells Slon.ru (via Yakov): “Our model ... is to exit via IPO ... An IPO’s timing is dependent on the state of world markets and the willingness of Digital Sky Technologies for the event ... I think it will happen within the next three years.” No info on this point, but it’s quite possible DST would float in London rather than Moscow.

 

DST was already a major-league online investor before buying part of Facebook, holding big interests in Russia’s leading portal Mail.ru, its top social nets Odnoklassniki.ru and Vkontakte.ru (a Facebook clone), dating site Mamba, link exchange Sape.ru plus Poland’s Nasza-Klasa.pl. Does its latest buy make a Facebook IPO more or less likely? Consider the case of Mail.ru, whose own likely

 

IPO was called off last year when DST upped its stake to a majority.

 

DST’s own shareholders include Arsenal football club shareholder Alisher Usmanov, Renaissance Partners, Tiger Global and Goldman Sachs, plus partners Miler, London-based Alexander Tamas and ex hedge fund boss Gregory Finger.

 

Usmanov bumped his stake up by another two percent to 32 percent this week. Russia’s internet audience is Europe’s fourth largest, behind Germany, the UK and France, April figures from comScore said Wednesday.

 

Source: http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-facebooks-new-russian-shareholder-planning-its-own-ipo/

 

Posted via web from Global Business News

Friday, May 29, 2009

On the Web, Streams Are Replacing Pages

By Joseph Tartakoff - Wed 27 May 2009

 

The Inside Word is a weekly feature that looks at unusual industry debates and discussions unfolding on the blogs of employees at digital-media companies.

 

Poster: John Borthwick

 

Blog name: THINK / Musings

Company: Betaworks

 

Backstory: Borthwick leads New York City-based tech investor Betaworks, whose network includes buzzy startups like Twitter, bit.ly, stocktwits and Tumblr. Borthwick blogs only occasionally but says he was moved to post this month when he noticed that companies in Betaworks portfolio were getting an increasing amount of traffic “via social distribution” networks.

 

Blog Entry: Perhaps it’s not surprising that Borthwick, given the heavy social-media component in the Betaworks portfolio, is an advocate of the “stream,” epitomized by the Facebook newsfeed and by Twitter. But in his blog post, he goes so far as to say that the stream has replaced the “page” as the metaphor for the web: “For 15 years, the primary metaphor of the web has been pages and reading,” Borthwick writes.

 

“The metaphors we used to circumscribe this possibility set were mostly drawn from books and architecture (pages, browser, sites, etc.). Most of these metaphors were static and one way. The stream metaphor is fundamentally different. [It’s] dynamic, it [doesn’t] live very well within a page and [is] still very much evolving.”

 

One implication: Since people are finding information via sites like Twitter or Facebook, website traffic will no longer always be steady, Borthwick argues. In a given month, there will be days when traffic will be way above average and sites should try to take advantage of this: “So what to do when a burst takes place? I have no real idea [what’s] going to emerge here, but cursory thoughts include making sure the author is present to manage comments etc., and build in a dynamic mechanism to alert the crowd to other related items.”

 

Post-script: In a followup exchange, we asked Borthwick what this might mean for advertisers, who are used to buying against a relatively consistent level of traffic. He said tools would emerge so that advertisers could put offers in front of crowds when they suddenly show up on a site. “It’s early days, but if the traffic flow changes, the way ad (dollars) work will shift as well,” he said.

 

Please e-mail suggestions for future editions of the Inside Word to joe@paidcontent.org

 

Photo credit: Mary Hodder

 

Source: http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-the-inside-word-the-web-is-not-dry/

Posted via web from Global Business News

Geithner Goes to China Hat in Hand

Beggar

By Greg Robb,

MarketWatch

 

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is about to get on a plane and travel half-way around the world to manage what is probably the world's worst marriage-of-convenience.

 

Mutual mistrust, competition and rivalry complicate a U.S.-China relationship that, on the other hand, has been so lucrative for both sides and the global economy. The two sides got closer during the recent recession, but there are new strains on the horizon.

 

China's currency has moved lower in recent weeks, riding on the back of the dollar. Criticism is sure to follow. With one of the few economies growing in the global recession, by all rights China's currency should be on the rise. Experts said this love/hate bilateral relationship is well-established.

 

U.S. policy towards China constantly swerves "between marriage and a nasty divorce," said Clay Lowery, a former Treasury official during the George W. Bush administration.

 

Over the past two decades, China has created an export machine that provides U.S. consumers with inexpensive goods while both American and Chinese companies benefited.

 

This has been accomplished, in part, by China keeping its currency low relative to the dollar. The byproduct is a wide bilateral trade gap and China becoming the largest foreign holder in U.S. Treasury securities.

 

China now holds $1.55 trillion in dollar assets, according to Brad Setser of the Council of Foreign Relations. As a result, China can look forward to an estimated $50 billion in interest payments on the debt this year.

 

China needs the U.S. to survive and prosper and the U.S. needs China to buy our debt, said Timothy Adams, who also served in the Bush Treasury. Washington has never been comfortable in this relationship. A debate continues at the highest levels of government whether China's rise is peaceful or a threat.

 

Beijing, on the other hand, is focused on respect and is not keen to listen to lectures from a U.S. government that has had to spend over a trillion dollars rescuing its banking sector.

 

Recession hasn't changed things

 

There had been some hope that the severe recession over the last 18 months would have altered this bilateral relationship. The theory went that with the U.S. consumer tapped out, China would focus on building up its own domestic consumer market. But experts say this hasn't happened, at least to the extent required. Instead, Chinese exporters have doubled down on the return of the U.S. consumer and have increased their capacity. Exporters appear to have political muscle in China to block meaningful reform.

 

At the same time, the U.S. budget deficit is projected to reach record levels for the next several years.

 

"We've got to hope China still has an appetite for our debt," given the "ocean of red ink" coming down the road, said Adams. Given this backdrop, the Obama administration wants to "make nice" with Beijing, said Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics.

 

Geithner wants to assuage China's concerns about U.S. monetary policy and the stability of its U.S. holdings and will not push for China to strengthen its currency versus the dollar, Weinberg said.

 

"Geithner has no leg to stand on to insist on more revaluation ... and he knows this," Weinberg said.

 

Geithner is also going to China to prepare the ground for high-level talks between the two countries to be held in Washington in the latter half of the summer. The talks are modeled after the program started by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Key Cabinet officials from both countries meet to try to rescue issues from the clutches of bureaucrats.

 

Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will share the stage, with Geithner shepherding economic issues, and Clinton handling environmental and political issues.

 

Geithner wants to be "low key" in his dealings with China, agreed Nicholas Lardy, a top China watcher in Washington for the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

 

Obama officials want to move away from what they see as the "lecturing mode" of the Bush administration, Lardy said. Congress has no appetite to fight China for fear that the tension might hurt the recovery. But if the jobless rate hits double-digits, then the focus of the public's ire may shift from Wall Street back to China, Lardy said.

 

"The rhetoric has cooled but not disappeared. It will come back," Adams said. Setser said most recent trends in the currency market are already fanning the flames. The dollar has fallen to five-month lows in currency trading, and because China's currency is pegged to the dollar, it has come down as well.

 

"China's currency has been depreciating in real terms even though it is generally thought that China's economy is going to do better than the rest of the global economy," Setser said.


So we're back at square one with the yuan tightly pegged as the dollar is weakening, just like 2002 to 2005, he said. Other Asian countries are scrambling to weaken their currencies to compete with China.

 

Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, said that the U.S. should go so far as to try to negotiate an appropriate bilateral currency rate with China, say 5 yuan to the dollar. If the talks are not successful, the U.S. should simply set a rate.

 

He said that complaints in Congress and the White House over the past decade about China's currency have amounted to "stagecraft." Not all experts are so glum. Lardy of the Peterson Institute said China's recent stimulus package "was the gold standard in terms of its response to the global economic crisis."

 

China put money in the hands of the population, he said. Car sales, for instance, rose dramatically. If China can continue this policy, it may offset renewed tension, Lardy added. For clues on how Geithner's meeting went, Setser suggested focusing on whether there in progress on China's making a contribution to the International Monetary Fund.

 

During the Group of 20 meeting in London, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that China planned to contribute $40 billion to the IMF but no official announcement from China has been forthcoming.

 

A senior Treasury official told reporters that this topic may come up in Geithner's meetings. Geithner will meet with the highest level of Chinese officials on Monday and Tuesday. But both sides of the marriage are likely to keep mum about their difficulties, at least in public. In the near term, "it looks like nothing on the horizon that is dealing with these problems," noted Desmond Lachman, an expert on global economics at the American Enterprise Institute.

 

Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/geithner-goes-to-beijing-to-manage-bad-marriage

Posted via web from Global Business News

OPEC Set To Leave Output Unchanged


Graphic showing Opec oil production

Opec bets on recovery to boost price

By Javier Blas in Vienna

Published: May 28 2009

 

The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries delivered on Thursday its most optimistic message about the global economy and the oil market since the start of the financial crisis last summer triggered a precipitous fall in prices from a record $150 a barrel to $30.

 

“We are beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel,” Abdalla El-Badri, Opec secretary-general, said after the cartel agreed to leave its production level unchanged, betting that the global recovery would push oil prices to $75-$80 a barrel.

 

“We are seeing [oil demand in] the US picking up,” Mr El-Badri added. “But, above all, which is the most important, we are seeing demand in China and India and Asia as a whole.”

 

Because oil demand was closely correlated with economic activity, Opec’s cheerful view was a signal the global economy was slowly strengthening, analysts said.

 

Ali Naimi, Saudi minister and one of the world’s most senior energy policymakers, added to the upbeat sentiment, saying: “The price is good, the market is in good shape and the recovery is under way, so what else could we want?”

 

Oil prices rose immediately to a fresh six-month high of more than $64 a barrel.


David Kirsch, an oil market analyst at PFC Energy, said in Vienna that Opec was leaving behind its worries about the global economy, last expressed at its March meeting. “Opec is witnessing early signs of economic recovery and financial flows into commodities,” Mr Kirsch said.

 

Opec delegates said that Saudi Arabia appeared confident that the flow of money into commodities – as investors worried about a pick-up in inflation or a further weakening of the US dollar – would help the cartel to support oil prices. Speculative flows, long an Opec foe, could turn into an ally, analysts said.

 

Nonetheless, behind the scenes some Opec members such as Venezuela and Algeria expressed their unease about the precarious balance between supply and demand, and high inventories.

 

The International Energy Agency, the western countries’ oil watchdog, forecast that global oil demand would drop this year by 2.6m barrels a day, the steepest fall since 1981.

 

In addition, crude oil inventories in developed countries both onshore and floating in tankers are near record levels. Those concerns echo the scepticism of many traders in the physical market about Riyadh’s view of rising oil demand. Few analysts on Wall Street share Saudi Arabia’s forecast that oil prices would rise to $75-$80 a barrel by the end of the year.

 

Opec’s communiqué reflected the nervousness of some of its more bearish members, saying that the cartel was ready to “respond swiftly to any developments which might place oil market stability and their interest in jeopardy”.

 

At the same time, the oil cartel’s ministers “reiterated the firm commitment to the individually agreed production allocations”, a sign that the group is concerned about some member states pumping above the officially sanctioned levels.

 

The group has announced three big output cuts since September, totalling a record 4.2m barrels a day – about 5 per cent of global oil demand – but it delivered about 80 per cent of the promised reduction last month, down from 85 per cent in March.

 

The official output ceiling of Opec’s core members, excluding Iraq, stands at 24.8m b/d. Opec will review the oil market in a meeting scheduled for September 9.

 

Data from the US Energy Information Administration showed that crude oil stockpiles fell more than expected as refinery utilisation jumped. Crude stockpiles fell by 5.4m barrels, compared with the expectation for a drop of 700,000 barrels.

 

Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7c3b46ee-4b56-11de-b827-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

Posted via web from Global Business News