"Yahoo!" turning into "Yahoo?"

There have been numerous reports over the past few days about executives in Yahoo! resigning and moving to new companies and the possibility of lawsuits from upsed shareholders, after the Microsoft deal fell through, and Yahoo! ended up going with Google. It may be that these events, the resignations and the lawsuits, go hand in hand, as the execs are trying to get out before the ship sinks.

TechCrunch has published a list of executives who have resigned, but before clicking on the link make sure you have a fresh cup of coffee as the >list is long. About 50 executives have quit Yahoo since January last year, more than 10 in the last 2 months. Even though the current deal with Google is more profitable than the offer made by Microsoft, many investors were disappointed with the decision.

YouTube videos to get longer and longer

YouTube has had longer videos in their content for more than a year now. There are usually two ways of doing this. Somehow uploading a video that lasts for an hour and a half all in one go, which would take you a while, or uploading it in segments. I have watched a number of documentaries that way, and although I sat through the whole thing, it wasn't the most pleasant way of watching anything.

Apparently, YouTube are going to make some sort of big announcement at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival this week, according to CNN Money. The same source indicates that they are fishing for up and coming directors for some sort of deal, and are stressing how certain directors of videos on their website have gone on to strike deals with studios.

However, YouTube is neither the first video website to upload full length videos, nor the first site to host the video of someone that later became famous. Stage 6 was very popular for a short period of time for full length videos, with documentaries and interviews from the 70's to the 00's, and its content, to begin with, was incredible. However, more users joined in and uploaded their videos, Stage 6 turned more and more into a big repetitive mess and it became harder and harder to find videos.

The most important consequence of millions of people uploading full length content and the main reason that Stage 6 closed, is the cost of storing all these millions of clips and dealing with whether or not they are allowed online.

Good luck to YouTube and more power to them for trying this, but I hope they have called DivX up and asked what went wrong with Stage 6 before starting.

Adobe sales boosted by overseas markets

Profits for the world's biggest design software developer, Adobe, have increased by 41% in the second quarter of 2008, thanks to demand for their products (Acrobat, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc.) in Europe and Asia.

Nevertheless, stockholders were not pleased with the profit outlook and Adobe shares dropped by between 2.5%-3.1%. Despite the 45 cents per share increase forecast by the company, the shareholders were looking for more.

Adobe is now looking to South America, Eastern Europe and China for new markets as the US economy slows down. According to statements by top officials within the company, there is no way of knowing how the recession will affect the company. Even though demand for the company's products remains high, their new income from Europe, that has sustained them during the grinding halt that is US economy, may experience a sharp decline as citizens of the EU head down to the beaches for the summer.

The Dark Knight returns to our screens

The latest installment in the Batman franchise, The Dark Knight, is about to hit us hard this summer. After dark auter Tim Burton's first two films followed a series of not so well executed sequels, ending in what was a garish fluorescent music video, aka Batman and Robin. However director Christopher Nolan came to the rescue and blew us all away with Batman Begins in 2005. Inspired casting began with that film and we will see Christian Bale don the cape and kevlar once more to do battle with the much awaited Joker, an intense character performance by the late Heath Ledger.

If The Dark Knight interviews and trailers are anything to go by, the action scenes and gadgetry will put every other Batman film to shame (and every James Bond film for that matter), and the production team tried to keep as many of the stunts as possible real. So, yes, that is really a man jumping off a 100 floor skyscraper, and apparently the only 3D in that scene is the fluttering of his cape.

What impresses me a lot more from the trailers is the unhinged lunacy of the Joker, an instability simmering just under the surface, less camp than the Jack Nicholson version (although that was in no way anything but excellent). Ledger was much more intimidating, creating an air of almost palpable danger.

However, what always lets me down in the Batman films, and there is no guarantee that it will or will not happen this time, is the inability of the directors to project Bruce Wayne's own instability and his ability to stand just this side of insanity. The Batman character in many ways is supposed to be a mirror of the Joker. And so far I have not seen this struggle to remain "good" portrayed properly. Having said that, Nolan has managed to turn the franchise around, so maybe he's done it all in this film.

Regardless, this is definitely going to be one of the biggest summer hits, and probably one of the biggest Batman hits. See you in the cinema.



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Yahoo! shareholders not pleased with Google deal

Saying that Yahoo! shareholders are less than happy with the rejection of Microsoft's offer for Yahoo's online search branch, is an understatement. Yahoo preferred to make an ad deal with Google, and as a result Yahoo stock dropped by 7.5%, while Google stock rose.

Many of Yahoo's shareholders and certain analysts believe that joining with Microsoft would have been a much more lucrative decision. But Yahoo wanted to revive an offer made by Microsoft in the past to buy Yahoo in its entirety, an offer they had rejected. This time around Microsoft were no longer interested in such a deal and instead offered $1bn to take over the search business and another $8bn for 16% of Yahoo.

To give you a clearer image of the money being lost, Yahoo believes they can make up to $800 million a year with the current deal with Google, while analysts estimate that the Microsoft deal could have made up to $1 billion a year. That is $2oo,ooo the shareholders will not be seeing.

Furthermore, Reuters reported that there will probably be lawsuits from the shareholders that will eventually cost the company even more. Perhaps Yahoo execs know something the rest of us don't. Maybe in the long run it will work out for the best for them...

Retailers stand to lose millions from credit card fraud

A loophole that allows credit card fraudsters to bypass security and make purchases online without raising any alarms in the online purchases security systems was reported by the BBC today. Apparently The Third Man security company noticed the crime being committed completely by chance while they were monitoring sales at an online shop.

Apparently, the loophole can be found in the Address Verification System and is quite simple to carry out:

"When carrying out address checks AVS compares the house number of a customer plus the digits in their post code to those input during a transaction.

For instance, if the Prime Minister bought goods at an online store with a credit card, AVS would use numbers in the address - 10 Downing St, SW1A 2AA - to help verify his identity.

In this case AVS would use 1012 as a shorthand ID check."(BBC)

So technically, all a credit card thief needs to do is find out your address and then an address including those numbers and he can start ordering away from your credit card. Just another reason to cancel cards as soon as you realise you no longer have them on you, and be very careful where you order from.

As liberating as online shopping is for millions of us, we must not pose the new risks that accompany it and neither should the retailers we use. After all, 1 in 10 (Britons) has fallen victim to some sort of online fraud and several tech sites report that over £500 million in fraud was attempted in 2007. If they do not use a safer system, I'm not shopping from them.

If you would like to see what other ways there are to avoid online credit fraud have a look at this article.

BT goes faster! But at what cost?

So BT have finally decided to up their speed. However, the cost of their new BT Broadband Accelerator, part of its Home IT Support Service, is £90 a month. On the one hand, for a consumer such as myself I don't know if it is worth it at the moment. The minimum increase in speed is o.5Mbps and this increase can come about through optimizing your PC, checking the wiring, plugging the modem into the master plug and even by fixing faulty wiring or other household electrical applicances. But it's still too much for me, living with 3 flatmates in a 400-year-old cottage. Primarily because when you have 4 people downloading at the same time it will affect your connection and secondly because no amount of rewiring will help with the electrics in a house as old as mine.

On the other hand, if you run an office out of your house, this could cut out the IT man. If your livelihood depends on being online at any given time and using high speeds to get things done quickly, then it is worth having a technician come over and help you figure out how to make your broadband run faster. In fact, it might even lower your business costs, as faulty wiring and appliances or malfunctioning lights might be using up unnecessary amounts of power. In that case the £90 price is not out of the question. BT are also to launch a product called iPlate, which will supposedly boost broadband speeds and comes to £10, a much more realistic purchase for a consumer such as myself.

This all sounds great, but I have raise the issue of BT's competitors. Because if you check out average speeds, you will notice that BT is not at the top of that list. Not by a longshot...

BT goes faster! But at what cost?

So BT have finally decided to up their speed. However, the cost of their new BT Broadband Accelerator, part of its Home IT Support Service, is £90 a month. On the one hand, for a consumer such as myself I don't know if it is worth it at the moment. The minimum increase in speed is o.5Mbps and this increase can come about through optimizing your PC, checking the wiring, plugging the modem into the master plug and even by fixing faulty wiring or other household electrical applicances. But it's still too much for me, living with 3 flatmates in a 400-year-old cottage. Primarily because when you have 4 people downloading at the same time it will affect your connection and secondly because no amount of rewiring will help with the electrics in a house as old as mine.

On the other hand, if you run an office out of your house, this could cut out the IT man. If your livelihood depends on being online at any given time and using high speeds to get things done quickly, then it is worth having a technician come over and help you figure out how to make your broadband run faster. In fact, it might even lower your business costs, as faulty wiring and appliances or malfunctioning lights might be using up unnecessary amounts of power. In that case the £90 price is not out of the question. BT are also to launch a product called iPlate, which will supposedly boost broadband speeds and comes to £10, a much more realistic purchase for a consumer such as myself.

This all sounds great, but I have raise the issue of BT's competitors. Because if you check out average speeds, you will notice that BT is not at the top of that list. Not by a longshot...

Apple drops price of iPhone 3G

There is no doubt that the iPhone and the 3G version are two of the most sleek and beautiful mobile phone devices, although they do a lot more than just function as telephones. So in order to try and tempt some custom away from Nokia and Blackberry, Apple have announced that the new iPhone 3G will be offered to consumers for £100, in its cheapest version with 8Gb of storage. Not a bad deal, as with the new 3G technology Apple claims users will be able to download two times as fast.

However, Nokia and Blackberry are not sitting with their arms crossed and smiles on their faces. Even though Apple only holds 5% of the global smartphone market, the drop in price could bolster iPhone sales when it is launched in 22 countries in July. But it will have to compete with Nokia’s N96 and the Blackberry Thunder. Apple’s hope is that the £100 price tag, which they hope will be the same across most of the countries the phone is released in, will increase their sales and help them catch up.

90,000 Spanish lorry drivers hit the breaks

More than 200 Spanish lorry drivers ground traffic on the borders with France to a halt last night, as they parked their lorries next to the toll booths and proceeded to stop other lorries from passing, in protest to the 20% rise in the price of diesel fuel.

The tens of thousands of lorry drivers on strike are mostly self employed or work from small companies, and they all face the same problem with the soaring price of diesel. Bankruptcy.

The hauliers have found support from others in their trade in France and Portugal. These strikes are threatening the arrival of goods to supermarkets and fuel all over Spain. Since May, protests by lorry drivers, fishermen and taxi drivers in 7 European countries have been reported by the BBC, and if fuel prices do not decrease it could spell many more mass protests throughout Europe.

The soaring diesel prices are due, to a great extent, to the 15% minimum VAT imposed on the fuel. However, the EU has stated that it will avoid cutting fuel taxes in order to deal with the high prices, and instead recommends that national solutions be found in each member state dealing with the problem.

Perhaps it is time to focus on more fuel efficient haulage and fishing vehicles and subsidise the purchase of such vehicles, a trend that should be followed by every company worldwide, as it makes long term financial sense and improves companies’ image as regards to the environment.

Portuguese language Googled into Brazilian

Globalization has seemingly a rather twisted influence on languages. It all started from online chat-rooms where expressions of thoughts and emotions transformed into cute or devilish yellow round smilies. Since then, day by day words started losing vital vowels and consonants while new incomprehensible vocabulary emerging through mobile texting. Ok, yeah! Now you tell us, like we didn’t know.

What’s new though are the new consonants European Portuguese will be phasing in the next six years - k, w, y. Apparently the Portuguese parliament voted last week for adapting its national language to the more popular Brazilian Portuguese dialect. It seems that 80% of the world’s 230 million Portuguese speakers prefer to cut themselves some slack with confusing hyphens and silent consonants found affluent in the 2000 years old Romance language.

Although globalization plays an apparent role it isn’t the only influence; it is for the rapidly developing former colony and the influence of the Internet that made the choice to go “Brazilian” unavoidable. And that’s merely due as much to Brazil being the 5th most populous country, as to being a much stronger state in terms of culture and economy; on top of all that the fact that Brazilians outnumber Portuguese on the web by a staggering six to one. Since this disparity is set to widen in the close future and given the importance of the Internet as a medium of global intelligence and business, the adaptation was an one-way solution.

Well, it might be true that normally a European colonial power is expected to endorse their language version as the correct one when confronted on the matter by a colony. That's what makes it so remarkable though, this time happening the other way around. Obscure as it may sound, it was only 33,000 Portuguese who signed a petition protesting against it leaving politicians no choice but to decide that the new standardised language is to be taught in schools across Portugal, Brazil and even former Portuguese colonies like Angola and Mozambique.

Great, isn’t it?

Napster Store vs Apple Store - Great MP3 Battle

Los Angeles based Napster Inc. steps in an unexpected challenge with Apple. The digital music department spearheads this courageous attempt to contest in the stream of digital music by launching an MP3 download database two days ago.

The Napster store accommodates a huge, very elaborate selection of MP3 tracks with no digital rights management software for 50p each or £5 for most complete albums.

What Napster simply intended to do, and quite honestly it hit bulls eye there, was to create a comprehensive music portal, where music lovers will be engaged to the necessary level to create a sort of music synergy. And on top of everything else the MP3 tracks will be compatible with every sort of MP3 player.

Very admirable attempt from Napster indeed, but will it be adequate to face Apple Store?

Iron Man vs Iron Man

As a dedicated 27-year-old teenager I must admit I still love comic book movies, especially when they top the quality of X-MEN II or Fantastic Four - The Rise of the Silver Surfer. I was looking a couple of weeks ago online for reviews about the indeed very entertaining Iron Man from Marvel.

That's when I came across a great paradox, a huge dilemma reflecting in perfect form all those tiny, little things that make people’s views so different upon the same subject.

After reading foolish reviews of shallow people who had minimum know-how about movies, I decided to try good old Microsoft but by accident, instead of launching the uk.msn.com – I launched the American version. Well, since I am here wouldn’t harm me to take a look what reviewers have to say about the movie I anticipated from across the Atlantic Ocean, I thought. The rating was almost 5 out of 5 stars, a grade which was elaborated extensively and quite convincingly on the article followed.

Content and even more excited about the upcoming Iron Man and thought to check the British msn as well. To my astonished disappointment I came across a tiny little description, a humiliating review regarding the movie as a disgrace for the brilliant trailer and with comments that it shouldn’t have been released in full length.

USA msn: http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie.aspx?m=2076905&mp=cr
UK msn: http://entertainment.uk.msn.com/movies/specials/summer-blockbusters/article.aspx?cp-documentid=8194674

Here I provide both links so you know what’s going on, and please someone help me, should I go and watch it or just download it after sometime?

Youtube Insulting Clips Raise Concern

Youtube and inevitably Google have been caught up in one more controversy over anti-Semitic videos circulating onsite. The Central Council of Jews in Germany took the case to the court to persuade the video-sharing site to permanently eradicate similar context. Claims that Google is to be held liable for “aiding and abetting racial hatred and discrimination” might be on the exaggeration side, nevertheless in Germany, incitement to racial hatred crosses the legal red line. Echoes of last year’s report in which it was stated that, among other racist works, Internet viewers could watch a Nazi propaganda clip called Jud Suess on YouTube, have not faded away yet. While the paradox still stands that Jud Suess is a powerful weapon against racism offering compelling video testimony about that particularly insane mix of evil and absurdity that characterized the Third Reich, nevertheless righteous are the concerns about Youtube context.

On another instance last month, the National Society for Epilepsy (NSE) were not so radical from their side and curbed to a warning for dozens of clips of people having seizures, some viewed by more than 70,000 people. Hundreds more show people pretending to have seizures in an unintelligible mockery of people suffering the syndrome.

“Footage of people having seizures which has been posted on the website YouTube is like a modern equivalent of the Victorian freak show”. Dr Sallie Baxendale, consultant neuropsychologist with the NSE continued: "In the original freak shows you couldn't have epilepsy because you couldn't have it on cue but on a video you can watch it whenever you want. They have got very graphic titles like 'never ending seizure'. Those are the one that have got the most hits.

A YouTube spokesman in an attempt to answer claimed: "YouTube has clear policies that prohibit inappropriate content on the site. Our community understands the rules and polices the site for inappropriate material. When users feel content is inappropriate they can flag it and our staff then review it as quickly as possible to see if it violates our Terms of Use. If users repeatedly break these rules we disable their accounts."

Have you ever encountered something insulting on a personal basis on Youtube?

Coffee Republic offers wi-fi Internet free

Coffee lovers who fancy surfing and working online from the comfort of a big coffee shop armchair have one more reason to be happy. Indulging themselves in the bitter sweet taste and fragrance of their Arabica or Columbia variety cappuccino while getting free wi-fi Internet access has already start happening at Coffee Republic cafes.

Coffee Republic pioneered the market as the first UK coffee chain to provide free wi-fi to its customers and this is actually happening since beginning fo May 2008.

The company obviously isn’t doing that out of their good heart. They aim to increase traffic and sales targeting mobile workers, business people and students. The business plan is actually based on a recent survey of 1,000 business people which revealed that 24% of them would be utilizing wi-fi hotspots to work remotely from a coffee shop at least one day per week.

The system implemented will be retained simplistic; the customers making a purchase at Coffee Republic will be offered a free wi-fi voucher giving them a login code to access the store's hotspot from any wi-fi-enabled laptop, mobile phone or PDA.Very simple isn’t it?

Actually two of the trials in Reading and Weybridge led to a noticeable increase in footfall, how do you think it would influence your coffee habits?