Heffee uses a formula that takes into account the input from websites, moderators and expecially the users to decide which news across the internet is the most important. Users can create their own customized feeds, save pages and articles from across the web, and subscribe to their favorite news outlets.
Incoming Sites
All Articles for E Commerce Times
|
Kodak announced on Thursday that as a result of an ongoing strategic review process and commitment to drive profitability, it will phase out its digital cameras, pocket video cameras and picture frames in the first half of 2012. Kodak will expand its current brand licensing program and seek additional licensees.
The fallout from changes Google plans to make to its privacy policies and terms of service continues, with consumer advocacy group the Electronic Privacy Information Center suing the Federal Trade Commission over the issue. EPIC is seeking injunctive and other relief to force the FTC to enforce a consent order it issued in October against Google.
The California State Teachers' Retirement System has a gripe about the makeup of Facebook's board of directors: It is too small and too male. In fact, there are no women on the board. "We believe that investors and the company would benefit from a larger, more diverse board," CalSTRS corporate governance director Anne Sheehan wrote to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Shares of Groupon were down about 14 percent midday Thursday, a day after the company revealed that it failed to turn a profit in its first quarter as a publicly traded company. The daily coupon site saw a revenue increase of 194 percent to $506 million during its first fiscal quarter, but it still had a net loss of $42.7 million, or about 8 cents per share.
Amazon and Viacom have inked a licensing agreement that will bring the number of instant videos available to Amazon Prime customers to more than 15,000. The deal will add episodes from Viacom's Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon and BET outlets. Titles will include "The Hills," "Jersey Shore," "The Hard Times of RJ Berger," several seasons of "The Real World," and some Comedy Central shows.
What do Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook and Apple's iPad have in common? What about authors like Stephen King, Barbara Freethy, C.J. Lyons, Amanda Hocking and Michael Prescott? If you said they represent the changing book publishing industry, you would be right. The book business is going through a major transformation. Who will the winners and losers be among publishers, stores and authors?
Sprint Nextel delivered its Q4 and full year 2011 financial results on Wednesday. The third-largest wireless carrier reported an adjusted OIBDA of $842 million for the fourth quarter and nearly $5.1 billion for the full year 2011. The company's stock price fell after it posted an overall fourth-quarter loss.
Oracle is clearly not prepared to let go of the TomorrowNow case involving corporate theft it suffered at the hands of the service provider, which was acquired by rival SAP in 2005. In a legal filing this week, Oracle rejected the $272 million in court-ordered damages from SAP. A jury found in favor of Oracle in 2010 and awarded the software maker $1.3 billion in damages. The judge slashed the award last fall.
Yahoo's chairman and three of its board members will step down at the company's next shareholder meeting as part of an extensive overhaul process Yahoo has been undertaking to please investors. Yahoo has faced criticism from shareholders for some time. Years ago, its management refused a buyout offer from Microsoft that would have netted $44.6 billion.
Privacy continues to be in the headlines. Companies and governments are garnering and analyzing information that they obtain through means some find questionable in unprecedented ways. Many readers use Google maps and rely on the Google Traffic tool to indicate whether traffic is moving or stalled, but the fact that Google uses Global Positioning System data from wireless devices is often a surprise.
Apple ended up being the top-selling smartphone vendor for the fourth quarter of 2011, but rumors about an as-yet unconfirmed next-generation Apple TV stole much of the company's spotlight over the last week. In a note regarding Apple, Jefferies & Co. analyst Peter Misek wrote that Apple stock was a smart buy because the company's next entertainment device, which he called "iTV," is on its way.
There's been a lot of activity on the Web and in our industry in the last week, and I thought it might be fun to try and tie at least some of it together. Much of it in one way or another involves Facebook -- or "FB," as the proposed ticker symbol suggests. It's widely assumed that its IPO will make the very earliest buyers a nice pile of profit, but what about those looking for a longer-term investment?
Amazon is planning to launch a retail store in Seattle in the coming months, according to reports published by Bloomberg and Good E-Reader. The endeavor is meant to serve as a pilot project for a possible chain of stores that would sell Amazon Exclusive books, as well as its Kindle Fire tablet, line of e-readers, and related accessories.
As Facebook prepares for an IPO of its stock that may value the company at US$100 billion, it's important to know what sport it's in and if, like the Chicago Bulls with Jordan, dynasties can last. Michael Jordan was probably the best basketball player to play the game of hoop. He had a halo effect. But baseball just wasn't his sport at the level basketball was.
Identity theft and privacy breaches are reported almost daily. For example, last month two utilities in New York reported that an employee of a software contractor allowed unauthorized access to a database containing social security, date of birth and other information. That same day the DoJ reported the arrest of three women in California for engaging in a scheme to use stolen identities to illegally collect tax refunds.
Look out Netflix, a new video service has swaggered into town. Rumored since December, Verizon's partnership with Coinstar, the parent company of Redbox video rental kiosks, became official on Monday. As with Netflix, customers will be able to choose between physical discs and streaming. The physical discs, however, will need to be picked up and returned to a Redbox kiosk.
Facebook is reportedly working on a system to put ads in its mobile services. The news comes just days after the social networking giant filed for an initial public offering, hoping to raise $5 billion. In its IPO filing, Facebook stated that the number of active mobile users of its social network is growing.
Google has rejected the request of European regulators that it delay the implementation of its new privacy policies to give authorities time to review the changes and ensure that users' data will remain secure. The European Commission's Article 29 Working Party asked Google to hold off on launching its new policies until after the committee could analyze the changes.
You don't need to go very far in IT nowadays to find people who are diligently working to do more with less, even as they're working to transform and modernize their environments. One way to keep the interest high and those operating and investment budgets in place is to show fast results, and then use that to prime the pump for even more improvement -- and even more funding -- with perhaps even growing budgets.
Microsoft has taken the wraps off of its forthcoming service update to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which will be released in Q2 2012. The service update will build on Microsoft's rollouts last year in such areas as social CRM and mobile. "We are on the path to deliver a significant new set of capabilities," said Craig Dewar, director of Microsoft Dynamics CRM's product management group.
TeleTech has been placed in the "Leaders" quadrant of Gartner's Magic Quadrant: Customer Management Contact Center BPO, Worldwide, 2011, and Yesmail has announced the release of its "Look Book" in celebration of its recent awards for mobile-scalable email design. Meanwhile, West Interactive and VBrick Systems have released major upgrades.
Jerry Yang is no longer "Chief Yahoo." He left Yahoo after 17 years. That's the news most people read or hear. Most people don't know Jerry or his approach. Let me share a personal story. In 1995, I first met Jerry at Yahoo. this was before the company was
public and before anyone really cared much at all about "the Internet."
Verisign has alarmed the online security industry with its reluctant disclosure of repeated hack attacks on its network in 2010. The infrastructure company supports key servers of the Internet's backbone, serving as Top Level Domain host for .com, .org and .gov. That it was repeatedly penetrated in 2010 was first quietly disclosed in an SEC filing in October 2011.
It can be a little tricky talking about how and why media outlets allow, and indeed encourage, the diffusion of their content throughout the Web. For starters, people tend to be tightlipped about this strategy. No one from CNN, Fox News, MSNBC or Viacom agreed to speak on the record for this article. They are, apparently, much less eager to discuss sharing content than they are to actually share it.
Salesforce.com unveiled a new customer service help desk tool this week. Desk.com works with customer requests delivered over a social network. It is the byproduct of Salesforce.com's acquisition of Assistly last year. However, it is no mere product integration, said Alex Bard, former Assistly CEO and now vice president and general manager of Desk.com.
Facebook has finally filed for its IPO. The social networking giant submitted an application to the SEC on Wednesday. It plans to raise up to $5 billion. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who cofounded the company in February 2004, currently holds a 28.4 percent stake. Details in the SEC document illuminated the extent of Zuckerberg's control over Facebook.
Apple has suffered a setback in its multicountry, extremely complex, and seemingly everlasting patent fight with Samsung. In the latest episode, its request to ban Samsung from selling two devices in Germany -- its Galaxy Tab 10.1N tablet and its Galaxy Nexus smartphone -- was rejected by the Munich Regional Court.
Facebook filed it's long-awaited S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, announcing its intent to raise $5 billion and begin public trading. The highly anticipated move caused enough of a stir to clog traffic on the SEC's website and provided some insight into the social network's financial situation.
Every day we hear about how AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless are running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to grab as much wireless spectrum as they can. We all remember the quality problems AT&T smartphone customers suffered. That same future is in store for every carrier and every customer unless we come up with a solution.
As a long-time Mac and iPhone user, I always enjoy seeing new people I work with embrace the Apple way. At the same time, while out and about at work conferences and trips, I consistently see more and more iPads and iPhones. I'm sure some of this is my ability to recognize an Apple product while my ability to spot two different Android-based phones is a little less refined.
Every tool has a purpose. That's never more clear than when you see a neophyte do-it-yourselfer trying to use a tool for a purpose other than what it was designed for. For instance, anyone wielding a hammer while trying to fix a car's engine is probably not going to succeed.
Superbowl Sunday, the biggest, flashiest U.S. sports event of the year, is also the country's biggest advertising event of the year, carrying some of the cleverest ads on TV. This year, Superbowl Sunday may also mark a watershed in advertising, with advertisers reaching out beyond TV to go into digital media in a big way.
AOL delivered a little bit of something for everyone with its Q4 earnings report -- good news, bad news, and hope that its many different initiatives are on track to pay off for the company. First the bad news: AOL reported a profit of US$22.8 million, or 23 cents a share, that was down from the $66.2 million, or 61 cents a share, it earned in the same period a year earlier.
Sony announced on Wednesday that Kazui Hirai is being appointed as its president and CEO, effective April 1. Current Chairman, CEO and President Howard Stringer will become the chairman of the board of directors in June. Sony has had a turbulent year, so a switch in leadership might help the company find a smoother road.
Amazon's stock took a pummeling Wednesday after the online retailer released quarterly figures that fell short of Wall Street expectations, which had been built up in part by past years' holiday performances. Amazon's net income was $177 million, or 38 cents per share, a 57 percent percent drop from a year ago.
Andreessen Horowitz announced that it has raised US$1.5 billion for a fund aimed at investing in technology startups. The new fund is launching just as one of the firm's well-known bets, Facebook, prepares to go public. Andreessen Horowitz has an unspecified stake in the social network.
Fitness instructor and personal trainer Yu Hannah Kim has always believed that fitness should be available to anyone. Now, with the launch of her new site, Yufit, she's making that dream a reality. Yufit offers streaming videos for everything from cardio kickboxing and core burn workouts to yoga and stretching.
A week after Apple revealed record-breaking sales numbers that drove its value to new heights, the company's fans were shown a bleaker image of Cupertino in a recently published news series. The iEconomy series paints a picture of harsh working conditions in some overseas facilities that manufacture Apple products.
I take briefings from all sorts of vendors every day, from established companies with a new release to emerging companies with what they hope will be The Next Great Idea that the market will seize on. I am always happy to give my opinion and advice, and sometimes it's even taken. But I am usually reticent to write about most of them simply because it's not my job to provide free advertising.
Already battered, flailing and in the throes of a corporate shakeup, RIM is now being savaged by critics over an infographic it created to depict the result of a Twitter campaign it launched over New Year's Eve. The infographic depicts four masked cartoon superheroes -- two males and two females.
