January 7, YNAB
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image by its website
December 24, Review
$85 billion loan would give central bank 80 percent stake in insurance giant
AP
September 16, MSNBC
NEW YORK - In a bid to save financial markets and economy from further turmoil, the U.S. government agreed Tuesday to provide an $85 billion emergency loan to rescue the huge insurer AIG. The Federal Reserve said in a statement it determined that a disorderly failure of AIG could hurt the already delicate financial markets and the economy.
It also could "lead to substantially higher borrowing costs, reduced household wealth and materially weaker economic performance," the Fed said.
"The President supports the agreement announced this evening by the Federal Reserve," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. "These steps are taken in the interest of promoting stability in financial markets and limiting damage to the broader economy."
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the administration was working closely with the Fed, the Securities and Exchange Commission and other government regulators to "enhance the stability and orderliness of our financial markets and minimize the disruption to our economy."
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photo: From left, acting Chairman and Commissioner of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Walter Lukken, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission Christopher Cox and Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh speak outside the West Wing of the White House after a meeting with President Bush. (Lawrence Jackson / AP)
After a survey of corporate customers, one Wall Street analyst cuts his expectations for revenue and profit growth
By Aaron Ricadela
June 11, BusinessWeek
Microsoft has irked consumers and corporate customers with the most recent version of its Windows operating system, which they complain requires hefty investments in PC hardware and offers a paucity of compelling new features in return. Now there are signs that companies' reluctance to install Vista is starting to weigh on Wall Street's outlook for the company's stock.
Charles Di Bona, a senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein and a noted bull on Microsoft (MSFT), said in a June 10 report that "dampening" adoption of Vista by corporate customers will shave $395 million in revenues and 2¢ a share in earnings from the company's financial results for the 2009 fiscal year, which begins July 1. According to a Bernstein Web survey of 372 information technology professionals fielded in May, companies expect just 26% of their PCs to be running Vista by the beginning of 2011, down from an estimate of nearly 68% of computers by respondents to a similar survey a year ago.
Shares Down for the Year
The new survey, conducted primarily in the U.S. in conjunction with Ziff Davis Media and Peerstone Research, also shows Vista's requirement of running on PCs crammed with lots of memory and powerful processors to be a deterrent. Companies expect to install Vista on only about 10% of the PCs they already own, compared with estimates last year that they'd be able to do so on 27% of their machines.
"It seems like the IT community has turned tepid to negative" on Vista, says Di Bona in an interview. "There aren't any features in there they find compelling—even ones that haven't had bad PR." For example, companies said in the survey that they were indifferent to Vista's Windows Presentation Foundation technology for building visually compelling programs, according to Di Bona.
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photo: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty Images)
By Scott Hillis
June 10, Reuters
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc on Monday unveiled a next-generation iPhone with faster Internet access that will run on advanced wireless networks and sell for as low as $199 -- half the current entry-level price.
Shares of Apple, after strong gains in recent months partly driven by anticipation of the new device, fell 2.2 percent after Chief Executive Steve Jobs indicated the company was going after the mass market with the new model.
"It changes the game for all smart-phone makers," Tim Bajarin, head of consultancy Creative Strategies, said of the price and new features.
The new phone also marks a dramatic departure for how Apple will make money in its third major business alongside Macintosh computers and iPod media players.
Wireless network companies will no longer pay Apple part of the subscription fees they get from iPhone users, but instead will subsidize the devices up front to make them cheaper.
"The vast majority of agreements we have reached do not have those follow-on payments, so you can conclude that the vast majority of carriers do provide subsidies for the phone," Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer, told Reuters.
Cook declined to comment on how the new arrangement would affect Apple's profit margins, but AT&T Inc, the exclusive U.S. carrier for the iPhone, said the subsidy would hurt its earnings and margins through next year.
"It is still a very profitable business. Now the negative is they announced the elimination of some of the monthly fees," said Shaw Wu, an analyst with American Technology Research. "But I can't really imagine the economics really being too much different."
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photo: Apple Corporation CEO Steve Jobs speaks about the price of the new iPhone 3G during his keynote speech at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, California June 9, 2008. (REUTERS/Kimberly White)
By Jonathan Fildes
Science and technology reporter, BBC News
May 16, BBC News
Microsoft has joined forces with the developers of the "$100 laptop" to make Windows available on the machines.
The move was prompted by countries which demanded the operating system before placing an order.
Trials of laptops loaded with Windows will begin in "four to five" countries from June, the organisations said.
The founder of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), which developed the machines, denied the move was a "desperate new measure" to secure more orders.
"While it is certainly true that it has not taken off as fast as I would have hoped and publicly stated, certain countries around the world... have always been very, very insistent that they want Windows as an option," Nicholas Negroponte told BBC News.
Until now, the XO machines, as they are known, have only been offered with an open-source Linux operating system.
Apple tactic
OLPC originally aimed to sell the low-cost laptops in lots of one million to governments in developing countries for $100 each.
The innovative machines, which have been designed for use in remote and harsh environments, were to be distributed to school children.
Over time, however, the project was forced to drop the minimum number of machines that could be ordered. Each machine currently costs $188.
So far, it has sold just 600,000, according to Professor Negroponte, although he said it expected a further 400,000 orders in the next "60 to 90 days".
"There is no question that demand goes up when you offer dual boot," said Professor Negroponte.
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photo: It has taken a year to make XP compatible with the XO (BBC News)
By Crayton Harrison and Amy Thomson
May 5, Bloomberg
Microsoft Corp.'s decision to drop its pursuit of Yahoo! Inc. increases the pressure on Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer to make his money-losing Internet business succeed against Google Inc.
Ballmer's bid for Yahoo, the most-visited Web site, signaled that Microsoft was making little progress against Google in Internet search advertising, said Charles Di Bona, a Sanford C. Bernstein analyst. Ballmer withdrew his bid over the weekend after Yahoo refused a sweetened offer of almost $50 billion in stock, leaving investors asking what his online strategy will be.
``They've got to come out sooner rather than later with a pretty well articulated vision,'' said New York-based Di Bona.
The danger for Microsoft is that Google, owner of the most popular Web search engine and winner of the most online advertising dollars, will expand its dominance while Ballmer plans a new course. Google gained 10 percentage points of market share in Internet queries since June, providing 59.8 percent of the searches done in March, according to researcher ComScore Inc. in Reston, Virginia.
Ballmer and Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft's Internet unit, met two days ago in Seattle with Yahoo co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo, two people familiar with the negotiations said. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, the largest software maker, offered to raise its $44.6 billion bid by about $5 billion, to $33 a share. Yang and Filo refused to accept less than $37 a share, the people said.
Microsoft was probably right to walk away because its return from the purchase would have been too small if it had paid more than $35, Di Bona said.
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photo: The Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. Web sites are displayed for a photograph in Hong Kong on Feb. 5, 2008. Photographer: Nelson Ching/Bloomberg News
How Starbucks is using a special brown logo to evoke the chain's beginnings and restore some goodwill for the brand
By David Kiley
April 14, Business Week
Brown is certainly a color that communicates coffee. So, when you order a cup of the new Pike Place coffee at Starbucks (SBUX) this week, it doesn't seem out of place to see a special brown logo on the cup and paper sleeve. Except that, as everyone knows, Starbucks' iconic logo is green. So why change such a successful corporate symbol?
The image of the twin-tailed mermaid inside the brown medallion harkens back to the chain's 1971 beginnings. The logo has evolved over the years, going from brown to green in 1987. This is the second time in three years Starbucks has trotted out the brown mermaid, inspired by a Norse woodcut. Back in 2006, she was resurrected to mark the chain's 35th anniversary. This time, she is a messenger for Chairman Howard Schultz, who is trying to restore some of the goodwill and warm feelings for the brand that have gone by the wayside because of increasing coffee prices, machine-made lattes, and bad press.
Starbucks plans to use the logo on all its cups for about eight weeks. It will remain in ads and as the logo for Pike Place bags of coffee. The new blend, which will be available in every store, has been crafted for a smoother, cleaner finish than many of the rotating blends Starbucks has traditionally carried week to week. This was done to combat the chief criticism of the company's coffee by reviewers, including Consumer Reports, that it tastes "burned."
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photo: The new old logo: Starbucks is temporarily using a sanitized version of its original branding on new packaging (Business Week)
By Roger O. Crockett
March 27, BusinessWeek
Motorola's mobile-phone business has turned from dynamo to disaster in just a few short years. With no hot products to follow its popular Razr, the onetime industry leader has rapidly lost market share and sales. The situation has grown so rocky that CEO Gregory Q. Brown has struggled to find a qualified executive to run the business—or any viable bid to acquire it.
But Motorola's move on Mar. 26 to spin off the mobile-phone unit could change the division's fortunes. The Schaumburg (Ill.) company plans to set up the business as a separately traded public entity, and the board has retained executive search firm Russell Reynolds Associates to recruit a new CEO for the company. Brown is now likely to find it much easier to attract a top-flight candidate, since the new chief will have a free hand. "That changes the dynamics of the search," says Peter D. Crist, head of executive recruiter Crist Associates in suburban Chicago. "Top execs at key players such as Nokia and other rivals would not have been interested [if the phone unit were not separate]. Suddenly they perk up and say: 'I can run that business.'"
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photo by BusinessWeek
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM
Feb 27, NY Times
At Starbucks stores across the country on Tuesday night, it was time for the corporate version of re-education camp.
In its campaign to revive the intimate, friendly feel of a neighborhood coffee shop, Starbucks orchestrated the closing of 7,100 of its American stores at precisely 5:30 p.m. for a three-hour retraining session for employees.
It was an exacting enterprise. At a store on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the drink-making employees, known as baristas, were told to dispense espresso into shot glasses instead of cups. They were urged to check the color of each shot. They were urged to pay more attention to the particularities of steaming milk.
A handout labeled “Espresso Excellence” informed them that “without aeration, the milk screams and lacks sweetness.” And: “The perfect milk requires surfing the tip of the steam wand until the sound is SSHHHH.”
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photo: A training session on Tuesday at a Starbucks on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, which focused on making the drinks (Jacob Silberberg for The New York Times)
Feb 26, You Tube
Feb 25, Wired
At the age of 40, King Gillette was a frustrated inventor, a bitter anticapitalist, and a salesman of cork-lined bottle caps. It was 1895, and despite ideas, energy, and wealthy parents, he had little to show for his work. He blamed the evils of market competition. Indeed, the previous year he had published a book, The Human Drift, which argued that all industry should be taken over by a single corporation owned by the public and that millions of Americans should live in a giant city called Metropolis powered by Niagara Falls. His boss at the bottle cap company, meanwhile, had just one piece of advice: Invent something people use and throw away.
One day, while he was shaving with a straight razor that was so worn it could no longer be sharpened, the idea came to him. What if the blade could be made of a thin metal strip? Rather than spending time maintaining the blades, men could simply discard them when they became dull. A few years of metallurgy experimentation later, the disposable-blade safety razor was born. But it didn't take off immediately. In its first year, 1903, Gillette sold a total of 51 razors and 168 blades. Over the next two decades, he tried every marketing gimmick he could think of. He put his own face on the package, making him both legendary and, some people believed, fictional.
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image by wired
Feb 18, Channel News Asia
TOKYO: Japan's Toshiba is considering abandoning its HD-DVD format as it is losing the battle for market dominance against rival Sony's Blu-ray format, an industry source said on Monday.
Toshiba is reviewing its HD-DVD business and "a complete withdrawal is one of the options it is considering", the source said.
The move came after top US retailer Wal-Mart on Friday drove another nail into the coffin of HD-DVDs by announcing it would shift to exclusively selling movies on Blu-ray.
Weekend reports said losses for the company could reach tens of billions of yen (several hundred millions dollars) if it decides on the pullout.
The HD-DVD camp also includes Microsoft, Intel, Universal Home Studios, and Paramount Home Entertainment.
The battle between the two incompatible DVD formats for next-generation DVDs is often dubbed as a replay of the VHS-Betamax battle between two types of video cassette tapes in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Wal-Mart's decision came in the same week that major electronics seller Best Buy and online video rental giant Netflix declared their allegiance to Blu-ray.
The death of HD DVD has been heralded since January, when Warner Brothers studio – Hollywood's largest distributor of DVDs – pulled out of an alliance with Toshiba and switched to Blu-ray.
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photo: A Toshiba booth at the CEATEC exhibition in Chiba, Tokyo (CNA)
By Andrew Clark in New York
Feb 13, Guardian
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is negotiating to rescue the embattled internet company Yahoo through an alliance that could set up a heavyweight business showdown between the Australian-born media mogul and Microsoft's Bill Gates.
News Corp has begun tentative talks about merging its online division, which includes the social networking site MySpace, with Yahoo to create a powerful combined presence on the internet.
The tie-up would provide a handy escape route for Yahoo, the world's most popular web portal, which is searching for a way to avoid succumbing to a $44bn (£22.4bn) hostile takeover bid from Microsoft.
But it would infuriate Microsoft, which is anxious to get its hands on Yahoo to bolster its flagging internet offering and to create a viable rival to the web search leader Google.
Yahoo's management is likely to be drawn towards a deal with News Corp because it would allow the internet firm to remain largely independent. Mr Murdoch's media empire would jointly invest $15bn alongside a private equity firm and would end up with a 20% stake in Yahoo according to details obtained by Techcrunch, an influential Silicon Valley blog.
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photo by guardian.co.uk
Coffeehouse conundrum facing returning CEO Howard Schultz
By Jasmin Aline Persch
Jan 29, MSNBC
Starbucks brought us the Italian coffee experience, teaching us to sip fancy espresso drinks in quaint cafes. Now the trendsetter is falling out of vogue — and some question whether the ubiquitous coffee chain can be cool again or will sink to a commodity.
That’s the conundrum facing Howard Schultz who’s returning as head of Seattle-based Starbucks, which for years was hailed by customers, investors and business professors, alike. That changed recently: The company’s stock price was slashed almost in half this past year. And store traffic slipped last quarter for the first time since the company went public.
Many trust, though, that Schultz can do something to help Starbucks — but what? He’s expected to spill further details about the turnaround agenda Wednesday, when the company reports first-quarter earnings. So far, Shultz’ plan involves closing some slacking stores, retarding growth here and amplifying it abroad.
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photo: A Starbucks coffee shop in the financial district of Boston experiences a high volume of business during the noon hour Wednesday afternoon, Aug. 1, 2007. Starbucks is expected to release quarterly earnings on Wednesday (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia)
Jan 28, Paypal
Now you can add your Indonesian bank account to your PayPal account, so you can withdraw your money directly to your bank. It saves you time and gives you faster access to your PayPal funds!
Plus, there is no charge to withdrawal amounts over IDR 1.5 million*. So go ahead and add your bank account today!
Step 1: Log into your PayPal account
For Filipino users, the bank code is a 9-digit number. This number is different from a SWIFT code required to send international wires. Please refer to ourlist of bank codes.
For Indonesian users, the bank code is a 7-digit number. This number is different from a SWIFT code required to send international wires. The 7-digit number assigned to each bank is typically used as an identifier to complete a local or domestic money transfer. Please call your bank to obtain the 7-digit bank code which designates your particular bank branch and location.
The first three number is official bank number from Bank Indonesia. The last four number is the branch bank number of your current bank. Here is the list number from Bank Indonesia.
Step 2: Add your Bank Details
Add your local Indonesian or Filipino bank account details and click 'Continue’.
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images by ebay.ph
Jan 15, Reuters
The largest U.S. bank is also likely to announce more than 20,000 job cuts when it posts fourth-quarter results on Tuesday, the Journal reported, as new Chief Executive Vikram Pandit tries to cut costs.
"You have a new person at the helm. He's going to do what he can to clear the decks," said Ralph Cole, portfolio manager at Ferguson Wellman Capital Management in Portland, Oregon.
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photo: People walk past a Citibank branch in New York February 17, 2007. Citigroup Inc is likely to announce on Tuesday a significant dividend cut, at least $10 billion of new capital and a writedown of as much of $20 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday (REUTERS/Keith Bedford)
Jan 8, ChannelNewsAsia
SHANGHAI : China Eastern's ambition of inviting Singapore Airlines on board as a major partner was scuttled by its own shareholders Tuesday, but its chairman angrily said a rival bid from Air China would fail.
Nearly four in five of China Eastern's minority shareholders voted down a proposal to let Singapore Airlines buy a 24 percent stake in the carrier, throwing the battle for the hugely lucrative skies around Shanghai into disarray.
"I regret the deal has been voted down," China Eastern Chairman Li Fenghua told a gathering of shareholders meeting at a hotel near the carrier's headquarters in China's largest city.
Singapore Airlines and investment company Temasek signed a preliminary deal in September to take the stake in China Eastern for US$923 million, or HK$3.80 a share.
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photo: Security guards stand outside the China Eastern Airlines' building in Shanghai
Food Giant to Install
Specialty Coffee Bars,
Sees $1 Billion Business
By JANET ADAMY
Jan 7, Wall Street Journal
OLATHE, Kan. -- This fall, a McDonald's here added a position to its crew: barista.
McDonald's is setting out to poach Starbucks customers with the biggest addition to its menu in 30 years. Starting this year, the company's nearly 14,000 U.S. locations will install coffee bars with "baristas" serving cappuccinos, lattes, mochas and the Frappe, similar to Starbucks' ice-blended Frappuccino.
Internal documents from 2007 say the program, which also will add smoothies and bottled beverages, will add $1 billion to McDonald's annual sales of $21.6 billion.
The confrontation between Starbucks Corp. and McDonald's Corp. once seemed improbable. Hailing from very different corners of the restaurant world, the two chains have gradually encroached on each other's turf. McDonald's upgraded its drip coffee and its interiors, while Starbucks added drive-through windows and hot breakfast sandwiches.
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