This, the first of our regional blogs, is authored by the technology and financial journalist Dominic Basulto. Dominic is a New York native, has been a senior editor at Corante since day one and has written for a number of online and offline media companies. Send tips or story ideas to: basulto@gmail.com.
About this weblog
Here we'll report daily on the latest tech and business developments in New York City. Impossible we concede: comprehensive coverage of the city's every story. What we hope you'll find: tips, tidbits and perspectives you won't find elsewhere. As well as unique insights, original interviews and more that should be of interest to New York's vibrant community of technologists and those who track, invest in and report on them.
Have a "solid, stodgy" product that hip young consumers avoid like the plague? It's time for an online brand makeover. It's a strategy that companies like Ford Motor are using to resuscitate old brands like Mercury. According to the New York Times, Mercury is following the example of other marketers like Amazon.com, American Express and BMW, which have used branded online entertainment ("advertainment") to reach a target audience online. In this case, Mercury has produced a five-part "Webisode" series called "Meet the Lucky Ones." Why go to all this trouble? Well, these young consumers spend a good part of their time online: "This customer, a little bit more female and younger than we have traditionally gone after, uses the Web as an entertainment medium and a social network, spending time chatting, reading blogs, on Friendster..."
New York Magazine raises the very real possibility that the best and brightest medical researchers in New York City will soon leave for California in order to pursue lavishly-funded stem-cell research projects. The stimulus, of course, was the passage by California voters this November of Proposition 71, the "celebrated and controversial ballot measure that could make the state a powerhouse in human embryonic stem-cell research." With Proposition 71, California is essentially "setting up its own version of NIH, offering $3 billion over ten years in funds that the Bush administration has refused to provide. In an unmistakable rebuke of Washington, California is gambling on stem-cell research becoming the biggest, most profitable medical advancement of our age—bigger than the discovery of DNA, bigger than the sequencing of the genome. California’s scientists will be untethered in their research, while New Yorkers... must either rely on compromised supplies of NIH-approved stem-cell lines or pass the hat for private donations."
That's not all -- in an extreme "doomsday scenario," New York hospitals will "lose their main profit centers and become like other urban hospitals -- catering mainly to the uninsured and subsisting on shoestring budgets."
It doesn't have to happen that way, of course, but the magazine piece suggests that it will -- unless Governor Pataki and legislators in Albany jump into the mix. Until then, NYC researchers will hunt for "a back door" to participate in the California Gold Rush (i.e. partnering with West Coast institutions in cross-country collaborations) or track down private dollars to fund expensive new research initiatives.
The article is an intriguing read since it puts faces, names and figures to the stem-cell research debate. New York has made tentative strides towards becoming a biotech powerhouse -- but nothing like California. Disaffected scientists and medical researchers interviewed for the article make the point again and again (and again) that "there is no recognition that science and technology is any value at any level to New York City." Governor Pataki treats the issue like a "contagious disease." That's despite the fact that the city is home to a handful of world-class medical institutions and a treasure trove of biotech talent. After all, as long as New York has finance, media and fashion, who really cares about biotech? Maybe the collapse of the Silicon Alley dream has convinced too many people that New York is not exactly the place to incubate new tech companies. There's a great anecdote in the article about Mayor Bloomberg cold-calling the CEO of Novartis and finding out, matter-of-factly, that the company never even considered New York for a possible office.
According to the New York Times, Internet start-ups looking for cheap, flexible real estate space in NYC might consider the turnkey solutions of Sunshine Realty Management, which operates two sites in Manhattan: 45 West 21st Street and 419 Lafayette. Basically, the company leases entire floors of buildings, divides up the space into cubicles and conference rooms and then offers it at affordable monthly rates to budding entrepreneurs. By New York standards, the prices are dirt-cheap: as low as $295 a month for a basic cubicle. But there's a lot of perks included -- the opportunity to have your mail sent to a real corporate address, the use of on-site conference rooms, and the ability to participate in group health care plans.
The New York Times doesn't actually use the word "Internet incubator" (that would be, like, so 1999) -- mostly because the real estate management company doesn't actually take an equity stake in the companies. In fact, it sounds like many of the entrepreneurs aren't even classic tech executives -- they are astrologers or travel agents or furniture designers. The two loft-like floors at 419 Lafayette, though, were formerly used by Internet consulting firm Razorfish.
Most interestingly, it seems that many of the new tenants are interested as much in the "proximity to others" as the low, low prices. In fact, one stay-at-home office worker interviewed for the piece emphasized that, "I need to get out. That was my main draw..." For the Wi-Fi and Lattes generation, there is obviously a trade-off between between working in public, open spaces that lack certain amenities (private meeting rooms) and working in stuffy, closed offices.
New York-based word-of-mouth marketing firm Buzz Metrics is among the leading players in tracking how online trendsetters and influencers can ruin a company's reputation using off-the-shelf technology available at any local electronics superstore. The marketing world calls them "determined detractors," but executives of once-proud brands brought to their knees call them "reputation terrorists." After all, says one advertising executive, "One determined detractor can do as much damage as 100,000 positive mentions can do good."
In one of the best-known cases, two brothers who live in New York City created a Web site complete with a three-minute video clip in late 2003 to protest the fact that dead iPod batteries could not be easily or cheaply replaced. There are countless other examples -- as Internet influencers take on corporate icons like McDonald's, Starbucks and Microsoft. In some ways, these passionate anti-brand efforts are simply a natural backlash against buzz marketing.
Forget about TV, radio, music or books as the place where new buzzwords and slang are coined. As the New York Times points out, everybody knows that the real action is happening online: "Now the great conduit is the blogosphere, both a neologism itself and an uncharted space that, the more we map it, looks more and more like our collective unconscious. It dreams up the new words and disseminates them directly into the language, no longer by IV but by instant messaging - a term, by the way, that may soon require its own retronym: messengered message."
Gary Stein, an analyst at Jupiter Research, takes a look back at his favorite topics of 2004. Not surprisingly, blogs made it to the top of the list. The chattering masses have always loved blogs, of course, but now it appears that advertisers and marketers are also tapping into the blogosphere as a rich source of real-time information: "The ability to tap into consumer conversations is fantastic and powerful. Companies are falling all over themselves trying to figure out how to use the blog phenomenon to their advantage. All too often, they conclude they should use blogs to talk. Please. Brands do enough talking as it is. Use the blog space to listen." (Hat tip: Micro Persuasion)
A portrait of President Bush using monkeys to form his image was banished from the Chelsea Market, but it's now found a new home on a giant digital billboard over the Holland Tunnel. According to Reuters, over the next month as many as 400,000 commuters will see the controversial billboard. It's all for a good cause, too -- a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the original acrylic painting on canvas will be given to the parents of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. For close-ups of the Bush-monkey montage and an explanation of the artistic intent of the work, check out Chris Savido's Workmade.com site.
The holiday spirit is alive and well at the New York Daily News. On the day after Christmas, the paper published two "feel-good" stories about the Internet full of holiday cheer.
Upon discovering that kids in Harlem often lacked books or even access to books (the nearest public library on 115th Street has been closed for two years), a teacher at Harlem's Frederick Douglass Academy teamed up with an employee at BarnesandNoble.com to create a Web site seeking donations to buy books for underprivileged students. Within days, the pair had raised more than $500 for new books -- thanks to a helpful plug from fiction writer Neal Pollack's blog.
The other story looks at the online subletting of NYC apartments during the holiday season, with a big plug for Craigslist. During the period December 1 - December 20, there were 8,000 holiday sublets listed for Manhattan and another 1,490 in Brooklyn. Thanks to Craigslist, individuals subletting their apartments earned enough cash for air travel and Christmas presents, while out-of-towners enjoyed a Christmas in New York.
In its list of the 15 people to watch in 2005, the Wall Street Journal has included online publisher Nick Denton. Is 2005 the year that blogging finally makes it big? We'll see: "Mr. Denton is looking to prove that blogging can be a business, building a small but growing galaxy of publications. Mr. Denton, publisher of the Wonkette political gossip blog and others, has become the poster boy for blog start-ups, snagging big-name advertisers with help from his highly targeted audiences. Altogether, his eight blogs, which include Gawker (Manhattan gossip) and Gizmodo (gadgets), pull in a total of more than 29 million page views monthly."
For more on Gawker Media's traffic figures (and a peek at three new blogs), check out Choire Sicha's analysis.
In the final step of its globalization makeover, Chinese PC maker Lenovo Group is relocating its corporate HQ to Armonk, New York (IBM's hometown). Moreover, the company will "essentially hand over management of what will become the world's third-largest computer maker, after Dell and Hewlett-Packard, to a group of senior IBM executives." It's a bit of irony for anyone concerned about the loss of jobs overseas: "American multinational companies outsource manufacturing to China. Why can't a Chinese company outsource management to the United States?"
In the New York Times, James Fallows of The Atlantic Monthly reports that IBM may be working on a "third-generation" search tool that far eclipses Google's "second-generation" search technology. In fact, IBM has already released a new product, OmniFind, that is based on a potentially revolutionary new search strategy known as "unstructured information management architecture" (UIMA). Thus far, the results have been encouraging: "The combination of ever-faster computers and ever-evolving programming allowed the systems to succeed at tasks that have beaten their predecessors." Among those predecessors, of course, is Google.
ClickZ reports that Fastclick could launch an acquisition bid for New York-based DoubleClick. On December 22, Fastclick filed for a $92 million initial public offering -- that's just 52 days after the company raised a monster $75 million round of VC financing.
Online gambling site Casino Fortune is willing to pay $5 million to put its name on the Financial District's "Charging Bull" bronze sculpture. City officials have ultimate veto power, and all signs point to Bloomberg & Co. rejecting the sale: they are "uneasy about letting a gaming business put its logo beneath a statue whose image has been closely linked with capitalism and the stock market." Moreover, State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has earned a reputation for "making life miserable" for online gambling sites. Whatever the outcome, Casino Fortune won't go quietly into the night: the company recently bid to acquire the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers and is apparently looking for other high-profile ways to gain an aura of respectability for online gambling.
On December 29, Cognizant Technology Solutions (based in Teaneck, New Jersey) will be added to the Nasdaq-100 index. As the company's president and CEO pointed out, the company is "the only IT services firm on the list and... the first and only offshore firm to be included in the Nasdaq-100." The announcement actually seems to have made more of a stir in India than in the New York metropolitan area. The story has already been picked up by the Economic Times and Rediff.com.
There's still time to get on Santa's "nice" list if you have a five-year lease in Lower Manhattan: The Empire State Development Corporation is looking to award $45 million to downtown businesses through a small-business grant program that expires on December 31. Since early 2002, the Empire State Development Corporation has awarded $110 million to 1,900 different companies.
After reader feedback suggesting that his "blog" is not actually a "blog," David Pogue of the New York Times admits that, "I’m obviously new at blogging, and still finding my way." On the way in 2005: shorter, punchier posts and more opportunities for "real-time back and forth" with loyal New York Times readers.
Thinking of taking a long holiday vacation? Well, don't be surprised if there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of e-mails waiting for you upon your return. Different people have different strategies for coping with this holiday nuisance says The New York Times, which interviews a number of New York office workers about their e-mail habits.
A professor at Rutgers explains the dilemma of holiday e-mail: "Today's reliance on e-mail has changed the nature of vacation. If you do clean your in-box, you're defeating the purpose of vacation, which is to get away from the office and do something different. If you don't, you have to work twice as hard when you come back. And while you are responding to those, new ones come flooding in. In some ways, you are punished for taking vacation, by out-of-control e-mails."
Bloomberg is reporting that Yasser Arafat, via a Palestinian investment company, invested millions of dollars in a number of New York-area businesses, including $2.1 million in Vaultus (software for wireless computers) and $1.3 million in Strike Holdings LLC (the owner of Bowlmor Lanes bowling alley in Greenwich Village).
UPDATE: With the New York Daily News splashing Yasser Arafat's photo all over its front page yesterday and the local news networks covering the story in-depth, it was only natural that Strike Holdings would reassess the million-dollar investment by the Palestinians. Almost immediately, the head of Bowlmor Lanes said that he was "hoodwinked by Palestinian-American money manager Zeid Masri and planned to return the cash and sever all ties with him." A hard-earned lesson, to be sure.
Just a reminder: the New York City Economic Development Corporation, in conjunction with the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, has issued an RFP for the re-development of the East River Science Park site as a major R&D campus. If all goes according to plan, East River Science Park will become "the City’s flagship location for companies in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, bioinformatics, and medical device fields as well as for contract research organizations." The RFP is due January 24.
CBS MarketWatch reports that the IPO market could heat up in 2005. Two big names, Lazard and PanAmSat, recently announced plans to file for initial public offerings and more companies could be set to enter the IPO pipeline soon, according to Morgan Stanley.
Yikes! Wal-Mart is selling a Linux-powered laptop for $498 -- the first-ever laptop to dip below the magical $500 price point. Analysts expect the market debut of the laptop to "accelerate Linux adoption" in the mass marketplace.
On news that IAC/InterActiveCorp was spinning off Expedia into a separate publicly-traded company, shares of IAC rose by as much as 11.7% in early trading on Tuesday -- a clear sign that Wall Street investors approve of the move. By the end of trading on Tuesday, IAC shares were 5.9% higher. By splitting the company in two, Barry Diller is essentially making the job of Wall Street analysts easier -- there will now be an online travel company comprising companies like Expedia.com, Hotels.com and Hotwire and an e-commerce company comprising businesses like Citysearch and Ticketmaster.
Oh, and don't miss the mention of Barry Diller in today's New York Times: "Wall Street is getting a version of Hokey Pokey Elmo, a chief executive who takes his subsidiaries in, then spins them back out."
Cablevision filed with the SEC to sell off its Voom satellite business and three cable networks, a move that the New York Post says "could mark the beginning of the end of the company in its current form." The four properties are part of Rainbow Media Enterprises, which earlier this month had been the subject of spin-off rumors. Instead of spinning off the company, though, Cablevision will search for outright buyers. On the news of the impending deal, shares of Cablevision rocketed more than 13%.
An interesting footnote to the deal: Cablevision has been locked in a dispute with Mayor Bloomberg over a planned stadium on the West Side of Manhattan for the New York Jets.
Advertising agencies like Deutsch in New York (named by Ad Week as "Interactive Agency of the Year" in 2002) are experimenting with entertaining Web sites that promote products subtly. Site visitors sometimes are not even aware of which products or brands are being touted. Among the best-known examples: SubservientChicken.com (Burger King), Slothmore.com (Best Buy), DigitalJoy.com (Microsoft & Intel), and ComeClean.com (Method soaps).
Microsoft is selling off Web 'zine Slate.com to the Washington Post for an undisclosed price -- a move that will surely reverberate throughout New York's Internet media sector. According to the New York Times, Microsoft had two basic reasons for doing the deal -- the company believed that "a Web magazine of cultural criticism and political analysis had little business salience in an age dominated by search applications" and that "the site's small size limited its ability to contribute meaningfully to Microsoft's revenues."
In the end, perhaps, it just makes more sense for Slate to be part of a media company than part of a technology company. As Slate explains, "We will leave the splendiferous House of Gates for the munificent House of (Washington Post CEO Don) Graham." As far as potential owners go, the Washington Post is not such a bad place to wind up.
Others in the blogosphere seem to agree. At New Media Musings, for example, JD Lasica gives his take on the deal: "That's good news for the good journalism going on at Slate. I can scarcely think of a better fit, a more benign editorial presence, and a smarter new media company than the Washington Post Co." In his "Santa Slate" posting, Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine is less upbeat, but still concedes that "they fit well together, not unlike Dow Jones and Marketwatch."
Breaking news: Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp announced plans to spin off its Expedia online travel unit. The move will create two publicly-traded companies -- InterActive (non-travel assets like Ticketmaster, MuseumTix.com and ServiceMagic) and Expedia (travel assets such as Expedia.com, AllLuxuryHotels.com and TV Travel Shop). Diller explains the rationale for the move: "We believe greater value can be created in the configuration we announce today than any other, and from this all else flows. This is entirely an elective...there is nothing else that pushed us, no transaction, no inherrent worry that led us to take this course at this time."
John Sexton, the president of NYU, looks into his crystal ball for 2005 and predicts that the FIRE sector (finance, insurance, real estate) will become less important to the future of New York City. Instead, more attention will be given to the ICE sector (intellectual, cultural, educational).
Sexton explains: "We have more students in higher education per capita than any other American city. Too few of us know and celebrate that New York is the leading importer of college students from the other 49 states. This concentration of intellectual activity displays itself vividly in science: over 100 Nobel Laureates in science; 45 active members of the National Academy of Sciences in bioscience alone; the highest concentration of science students and post doctoral students; and more Ph.D.s granted in life science than 48 states. In short, we are the educational capital of the world."
A follow-up investigation from the New York City Council shows that young children can walk into nearly any store selling video games in New York City and purchase games that encourage brutality against women, the shooting of police officers, and the committing of racially-motivated acts of violence. That's not good, and the 45-page report recommends six steps to combat this problem, including new legislation and the creation of a new task force on violent video games. (Hat tip: Gotham Gazette)
Malcolm Gladwell's new book "Blink" is due out in early January, and the buzz is already starting to build. Fast Company, for example, has made him the cover story for this month's issue, calling him the "Accidental Guru." Ever since the publication of his "Tipping Point" book in 2000, Gladwell has been on fire as a "business thought leader," with his speaking gigs reportedly fetching as much as $40,000 apiece. (Gladwell's book tour kicks off in New York City on January 13 at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square)
For one day, at least, the New York Post puts away its tabloid sensationalism to look at what happens when real-world decision makers can't trust economic statistics released by the government. Quite simply, "in the real world, folks get hurt when the official gauges for an economy can't be trusted or when they need to be viewed with increasingly skeptical eyes." Even basic government statistics like employment figures can be terribly distorted or misreported. The lesson in all of this? "Most people are their own best economist. And — as they say — if an economic number looks too good to be true, it probably is..."
On a related topic: over at Tech Central Station, Arnold Kling tackles the problem of "Dollar Drama, Dollar Delusions" -- how unreliable international economic statistics can impact currencies and trade deficits.
The open source advertising trend continues to gain momentum, says Rick Bruner. Two examples, in particular, stand out: the homemade ad created by a California school teacher for the Apple iPod and the two-page ad for the Firefox browser that appeared in the New York Times (courtesy of donations from 25,000 loyal users).
Crain's New York reports that Nielsen Interactive Entertainment, in collaboration with Manhattan-based gaming company Massive, is launching the first in-game ad auditing service. The new service, scheduled for a mid-2005 launch, "pushes the digital game world closer to being a coherent advertising venue." As might be expected, a sales and marketing executive at one game publisher was enthusiastic about the announcement: "That a viable, respected measuring service is going to start qualifying games data and make it comparable to other media is very exciting..."
In "The Self-Hating Blogger," Tom Watson announces that he is no longer willing to "smooch under the mistletoe of media misunderstanding." He's retiring from the blog business effective today, disgusted by bloggers blogging about bloggers.
Watson is officially calling a top to the blog market: "Blogs are yesterday's news. Dead. Unbreathing. Anachronistic folly of the followers. Mere digital entrails. We're talking lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Fury lay buried dead. The crooked crosses and headstones, the spears of the little gate, the barren thorns, the whole deal. The Dead. Another trendline I've followed to the downward side of the peak..."
Trigger-happer day traders are becoming more active, thanks to a rebounding stock market and an improving economy. It's not the "Joe Schmo trucker" who's trading these days, though, it's the "new breed of day trader": younger, hipper and more aware of the risks involved. One 30-year-old Yale graduate profiled in the story, in fact, claims that he earned $25,000 last month alone while trading for HLV (a small firm wedged into a 1-room office in Times Square). During the Internet boom, some day traders made as much as $30 million a year by rapidly moving in and out of new positions during the course of a day.
If you join the NYC Photobloggers, you can take part in activities like the Vintage Subway Tea Party: depression-era suits, flapper gowns and tea all aboard the vintage New York subway trains rumbling through the city. (Hat tip: Jason Kottke)
Connecticut-based satellite broadcaster PanAmSat is preparing for a $1 billion IPO, according to the New York Post. Just four months ago, an investor consortium led by buyout specialist KKR acquired the company for $4.1 billion. Unnamed sources noted that "the proceeds from the offerings will be used to put tons of cash in the pockets of PanAmSat's current private equity owners."
Bob Tedeschi of the New York Times reports that online retailers are becoming a haven of last resort for "procrastinating shoppers" waiting until the 11th hour to buy and ship gifts. In previous years, online retailers stopped taking pre-Christmas orders around the 14th or 15th; this year, however, Web retailers have boosted their back-office capabilities and have extended the ordering date to the 20th in some cases. However, if promises of pre-Christmas delivery fall short, retailers could be risking fines from the FTC or the "wrath" of consumers and shareholders.
From NewYorkish, the "questionable business concept of the day" -- an online Secret Santa social network called Elfster. Using the tagline "Because it's too big a sack for one man to carry," Elfster is promising to revolutionize the Secret Santa game forever. Obviously, somebody's been spikin' the eggnog a bit early this year.
UPDATE: The creator of Elfster recently contacted me -- turns out that it's not a real business after all. Check out the privacy statement of the Web site, which mentions, among other things, a HoHoHo Ranking... Apologies.
Shares of Long Island-based OSI Pharmaceuticals spiked by nearly 50% in early Friday trading on news that Iressa, a rival lung cancer drug from AstraZeneca, did not prolong patients' lives in a late-stage trial. As described earlier ("What happened to Long Island's biotech superstar?"), OSI Pharmaceuticals has been the subject of intense Wall Street speculation after receiving FDA approval for its Tarceva cancer drug in mid-November. Until the AstraZeneca announcement, many analysts had been skeptical that Tarceva would perform better than Iressa. Shares of OSI are now trading around the $70 mark.
Wall Street boutique Lazard has filed for a $850 million IPO, becoming "the last of the old-line Wall Street partnerships to sell its shares to the public." The House of Lazard traces its pedigree back to 1848.
We still love Rudy, even if the decision to push forward the nomination of Bernard Kerik has turned into a huge fiasco. For the Bush Administration, the problem may have been focusing exclusively on formal networks during the recruiting process, and not enough on unintentional networks. As Cliff Allen explains, it's important to understand how these unintentional networks ("the network of people who know us and talk to others about their experiences without us even knowing about it") can impact reputation. In Kerik's case, the unintentional network did a lot of talking, effectively dooming his nomination.
With that in mind, Allen shares some quick tips for anyone hoping to avoid a Bernard Kerik-like experience: "Do your best to make sure that the people you interact with have a positive experience, or at least feel that you treated them fairly under the circumstances. Also, stay in contact with people in your network and make sure they know they can call on you when they need help, information, or a referral to one of your contacts. You never know when you'll be called upon to be part of someone's unintentional network to help create an opportunity for someone in your network."
As might be expected, Google's plans to create a "global virtual library" has generated buzz in the community of New York's scholars and librarians. The New York Times follows up Google's decision to digitize some holdings of the New York Public Library system by interviewing some of the more outspoken members of this community.
David Nasaw (director of the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center): "The ability to use keywords to locate books and documents could save academics travel time and money and ease and broaden the scope of their research."
Kate Wittenberg (director of the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia University): "This all captures people's imagination in a wonderful way. But whether it's right or wrong is not the whole question and not the whole answer. What I've learned is that libraries help people formulate questions as well as find answers. Who will do that in a virtual world?"
Briefly noted in today's New York Post: the Bloomberg Administration is experimenting with online "reverse auctions" for items such as computers. Vendors will bid against each other, with the lowest price winning. Based on the success of similar reverse auctions conducted by the U.S. Postal Service, the move to auction-based purchasing "could save taxpayers millions."
Too bad all those millions saved by hard-working taxpayers will be quickly and efficiently sucked up by the MTA's new fare hikes.
New York-based consultancy Mardis, Aibel & Associates has released the "Biotechnology Framework Study" detailing the reasons why emerging biotech start-ups fail. It all comes down to management. Or the lack thereof. "Balancing solid science with solid management" is essential if a company wants to avoid winding up on the scrapheap of history.
According to the study, "a primary reason for such failures is an ongoing conflict, at many companies, between the collegial, informal, creativity-based management model common to scientific endeavors and one that has more discipline, structure and predictability. As part of that conflict, biotechs tend to hire managers whose expertise is in the science end without management experience, and that can be fatal." In all, the study analyzed 56 biotech companies.
IAC/InterActiveCorp, the online travel juggernaut operated by Barry Diller, now owns a 52% stake in Chinese online travel provider eLong after exercising warrants worth $108 million. In August 2004, the company made an initial investment of $58.7 million in the company. According to IAC executives, the future's so bright in China, you gotta wear shades: "We are excited by the opportunity this provides us to embrace the growth potential of the Chinese travel market. China represents an $87 billion travel and tourism market opportunity today, forecast to grow to more than $300 billion by 2014."
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has selected Unisys Corporation's CommHub (a secure wireless technology) to help its emergency response teams coordinate activities. Over the past six months, a number of other municipalities have also experimented with wireless technologies and now consider them a "critical part in managing emergency response for fire, police, and medical personnel."
CommHub "enables the Port Authority's first response teams to stay connected with emergency operations centers and each other during incidents at airports, bridges, tunnels, bus terminals, seaports and other facilities it manages." The Unisys CommHub can be mounted directly onto an emergency vehicle or hand carried by emergency personnel.
Scandal-tarred Long Island software maker Computer Associates is ready for a marketing makeover, reports Ad Week. It's time to put those nasty accounting scandals away once and for all. The global marketing and advertising effort is expected to span 50 countries at a total price tag of $150 million.
Internet News has the latest scoop on IBM's plans for the RFID market. After setting up a new software division in late September, the company has moved aggressively on a $250 million bet on the future success of the RFID market. The key, says IBM, is focusing on moving power to the edges of the RFID process flow: "What we've tried to do was really move some of the computing power as far to the edge of the network as possible, so we've enabled the RFID readers into technology-enabled smart readers -- readers that can do more than just read a tag."
After two years of hand-wringing, it's now official: according to FASB, companies must now account for stock options as typical business expenses. For publicly-traded companies, the rule will take effect starting July 1, 2005. The FASB's logic: "We believe that recognizing the costs of these arrangements in financial statements improves the relevance, the reliability and the comparability of financial information."
Yet, as anyone who witnessed the tremendous boom of the Internet era knows, it was exactly these stock options that encouraged the best and the brightest to take a bet on the high-flying companies that later became Amazon, eBay or Yahoo. A coalition of tech companies promises to fight the rule change, but it looks like a fait accompli at this point.
MSNBC has finally found a high-speed wireless network that lives up to its claims: Verizon Broadband Access. For a cost of $80 per month, wireless Internet users can reach typical speeds of 300-500 kbps and bursts of up to 2 Mbps.
After mourning the demise of Ricochet, the article takes Verizon Broadband Access for a test drive. The results are impressive: "Speed-wise, Verizon’s EV-DO connectivity lived up to its promises. I easily obtained DSL speeds in my home, on the street and even inside some businesses where people were fascinated by Verizon’s accomplishment. In New York, the Sierra Wireless/Verizon combination worked the first time, every time."
"Time Warner's largest investment is expected to come in the cable arena where Mr. Parsons has shown an interest in joining with Comcast to bid for Adelphia Communications, the bankrupt cable operator. Bids for that company are expected in January, which partly explains why Time Warner has been so eager to settle government charges... Mr. Parsons has also said that his company may be a bidder for Cablevision Systems, should Charles F. Dolan and his family, which controls the Long Island-based company, decide to sell."
Normally we avoid stories about precocious Manhattan kids and leave those kinds of things to Daily Candy or Gawker or whoever. But this story from the New York Times was just too good to pass up: "Computer-savvy children, with encouragement from the toy and apparel industries, are transforming the old-fashioned handwritten wish list into sophisticated computer presentations, complete with hyperlinks to favored Web sites and downloaded images of must-have items."
A graduate student from Columbia University argues that the time is now for New Yorkers to support an efficient energy policy. Increasing energy efficiency leads to reduced energy use and "reducing energy use would save money, prevent blackouts, reduce the need to build new power plants, and could also improve local air quality."
Fast Company has put out an all points bulletin to find the best VC blogs. We hate to turn this into a West Coast v. East Coast thing, but there are a handful of New York-based venture capitalists who run some pretty cool blogs. So, be sure to put in a vote for Ed Sim (BeyondVC), Steve Brotman (VCball) or Fred Wilson (A VC).
A number of bloggers have recently discovered PubSub's LinkRanks system. In short, LinkRanks are a measure of how many pages link to each particular site, with more weight given to fresher links and to links from a wider variety of pages.
In case you're counting, Corante came in at #51, nestled nicely between Technorati (#50) and NPR (#52). Not bad company, considering that the New York Daily News came in at #71, the New Yorker at #73 and the Village Voice at #100. At #3, The New York Times is still the 800-pound gorilla of the online news space.
NYU's Adam L. Penenberg describes five events he would like to see in the world of online media in 2005 -- Google daring to place ads on its Google News service; bloggers actually breaking news instead of "ruminating over their daily fix of spoon-fed media"; the dismantlement of the FCC; the end of Nielsen and ComScore; and media reasserting its role as government watchdog.
The mistake that cost Time Warner half a billion dollars
Crain's New York reports that Time Warner is set to pay $510 million to settle an investigation into accounting irregularities at AOL -- $210 million to the U.S. Justice Department and $300 million to the SEC.
New York-based Kanoodle is apparently cooking up ways for bloggers to monetize their content: in early November, the company inked a deal with Six Apart (the creators of Movable Type and TypePad) to offer TypePad subscribers the ability to easily add Kanoodle's content-targeted sponsored links to their sites. The new service could be up and running by the end of 1Q 2005. Kanoodle comments on the importance of the deal: "This marks the first time that webloggers will have seamless access to revenue generating sponsored links as part of their publishing toolset."
Also in today's New York Times: product reviews from Michel Marriott of four worthy challengers to the Apple iPod -- Creative's Zen Touch, the iRiver H320, the Archos Gmini 400, and the Rio Karma.
David Pogue of the New York Times reviews four competitors to the Apple iPod Mini: the Dell Pocket DJ, the Creative Zen Micro, the Virgin Electronics Player, and the Rio Carbon. The bottom line: "The iPod Mini's rivals aren't as elegant or as polished, they're not as thoughtfully conceived, and they may not fill you with as much pure, overwhelming technolust..." (But they're 50 bucks cheaper and each of the four has "some superpower that the iPod Mini lacks.")
From Crain's New York: Queens-based generic drugmaker Eon Labs received final approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to market a generic version of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.'s diabetes drug, Glucophage XR.
Writing in New York Magazine, former Internet analyst Henry Blodgett explains how the Internet bust became an Internet boom. It's a bit of an "I told you so" moment for Blodgett, who explains how the Internet "has finally come of age." Any industry, he argues, naturally goes through four distinct phases -- boom, bust, growth and decay -- and the Internet industry is no different. The late 1990s were not an "embarrassment" or a "kindergarten recess run amok" -- it was a necessary period that laid the groundwork for today's current growth.
As might be expected, Google's decision to digitize the library holdings of several major research institutions (including the holdings of the New York Public Library) has generated a lot of buzz and speculation in the blogosphere. Props to The Shifted Librarian (who else?) for tracking down some of the more important commentary. And, for your reading pleasure, three different takes on the deal:
"It's a pure work of persuasion, arguing that popular culture, on average, has been growing more cognitively challenging over the past thirty years, not less. Despite everything you hear about declining standards and dumbing-down, you have to do more intellectual work to make sense of today's television or games -- much less the internet -- than you did a few decades ago. It will definitely be the most controversial of my books
