We rarely miss a chance to pick on relentless egoblogger Robert Scoble. But today, RoboScoble is hurting, and his hurt hurts like our hurt. Only his hurt runs about 2,000 words longer. How has tech blogging failed Robert since the halcyon days of 2003? Here's the executive briefing:
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Last week, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang was calling corporate raider Carl Icahn an inconsistent numbskull. This week, he's announcing that Icahn will join the board, and hailing his "fresh perspective." Jerry Yang deserves a pat on the back for coming to terms with the hostile investor; an ongoing fight would destroy the company he professed to love. But does he have to shred whatever is left of his credibility in the process? Here's a reminder of what Yahoo wrote about Icahn on its proxyfacts.yahoo.com website, linked to from the Yahoo homepage, until Yang abruptly changed his tune. Perhaps Yang and Icahn can have a nice chat about it before they move on to an acquisition of GitHub.
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Latest by giddieup: i would not expect anything else from anyone at yahoo. wishy washy. changing stance every other week.
thats why the company is where it is. more »
Amazon.com and TiVo enable couch-potato lifestyle
Finally realizing the dreams of advertising professionals since the 1950s, Amazon.com and Tivo announced new features to closely integrate shopping with TV watching. Viewers of talk shows — where pitching movies, music, or books vaguely masquerades as entertainment — will now have an opportunity to buy exactly what's being discussed on TV! Fancy the newest obsession of Oprah in her book club or like the CD being flogged by David Letterman's new favorite band? Just buy it with one click of TiVo's remote, and Amazon will deliver. If you like obvious product placements now, you're going to love the future. [NYT]
Manhattan's Philip Smith, who is both an old and a rich, filed for divorce from his 25-years-younger wife Tricia Walsh-Smith, citing cruel and inhuman treatment. Smith told Walsh-Smith he would not pay her more than a prenuptial agreement had stipulated. Then Walsh-Smith went crazy and posted a video to YouTube, in which she claims Smith never had sex with despite hoarding stashes of Viagra, condoms and porn. My favorite part: When she gets Smith's assistant on the line and asks her what to do with it all. Poor bug-eyed crazy lady. The video, embedded below, got plenty of attention — about 3 million views — but in the end, hurt Walsh-Smith more than it helped. Calling her video "a calculated and callous campaign to embarrass and humiliate her husband," a judge yesterday gave Walsh-Smith 30 days to leave the former couple's Park Avenue apartment. The video:
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A dating site billing itself as the Facebook of kink has played host to the accidental debut of actual Facebook user Becky Spraggs as a model-for-hire. According to Spraggs, photos from her Facebook account were used to make a fakester profile at FetLife.com, listing her ex's mobile number as her agent's with the come-on "I want to be used and abused." The profile elicited 50 phone calls offering her work. FetLife's founder John Baku says he removed the profile within 30 minutes of hearing the complaint — not from Spraggs, but from a reporter. As much as we journalist types like looking at your naughty Internet bits, next time someone accuses you of being kinkier than you want to admit online, maybe try hitting up the tech support guys first?
The Charles Schwab Corporation has predictably named its president, Walt Bettinger, to succeed its eponymous founder as CEO. Bettinger, like Schwab, is a scrappy entrepreneur, or so the canned corporate biography has it; he founded a company at the age of 22, which Schwab later bought. Not mentioned in Bettinger's bio: A court case involving a Walter W. Bettinger II and Laura Bettinger. In 2005, this Walter tried to get a $6,000/mo. child-support payment to Laura reduced, in part because the value of her Schwab account had increased. If that's the same Walt Bettinger, Schwab shareholders should be impressed: He may not have kept the marriage intact, but he successfully retained his ex-wife as a customer.
We hear that some Yahoo executives charged with developer relations, in their eagerness to reach more programmers and have them hook their software into Yahoo services, have been talking to source-code repository GitHub about an acquisition. GitHub's intended audience, programmer Ted Dziuba explains, is "people who spray their shorts over Git because it was invented by Linus Torvalds," the inventor of Linux; it's an alternative to Subversion, a tool for managing software's source code. But this move to fold a community of Torvalds fanboys into Yahoo has been stalled by the recent unpleasantness with Carl Icahn. All acquisitions are on hold until the next board meeting, champions of a GitHub acquisition have been told. Just as well; this deal sounds like a nonstarter, which should be killed for reasons beyond testy shareholders. Yahoo has enough gits as it is.
Latest by Alaska Miller: If your day job isn't related to Linux you're most likely not using Git, you'll be using some sort of private SVN server. Yahoo's purchase of the site is simply trying to build up cachet within the FOSS communities. As more »
What does Microsoft have to show for its $240 million Facebook investment? An ever-diminishing presence on the site. Facebook's redesign no longer features Microsoft-sold ads on some of Facebook's most-trafficked pages.
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Yahoo reported second-quarter profits of $131 million, down from $161 million the first quarter. Even after lowering their expectations, Wall Street analysts hoped the company would report profits of $140 million. The company also missed on revenues, reporting $1.35 billion in revenues after payments to Web publishers which carried Yahoo-sold ads. Wall Street wanted $1.37 billion. Hoping to breed some optimism, CFO Blake Jorgensen told Reuters Yahoo has not changed its financial guidance for 2008, despite advertising woes.
"I've decided to step down as editor of this publication in late August so as to start a new company," writes Engadget editor Ryan Block, confirming earlier rumors. In theory, his replacement is ready. In practice, having worked with the guy, I'm sure it's going to be tough to match his 24x7 obsession with winning at everything. Here's the newsy part of Block's goodbye post:
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After giving a lower forecast for its September quarter than Wall Street expected, Apple saw its shares drop 3 percent today. TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says not to blame the numbers, but the numbskull PR move Apple made in refusing to discuss plans for Jobs's successor. "Look," Cramer says in the clip embedded below, "I thought the forecast was great. This is all about [Apple saying] Jobs's health is a 'personal matter."
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E-gold founders plead guilty to money laundering
E-gold and the online money-transfer site's three owners have reached a deal with the Department of Justice to plea guilty to charges of conspiracy to engage in money laundering and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business. The company now faces fines of up to $3.7 million, along with an agreed-on forfeiture of $1.75 million in funds. Douglas Jackson, one of the owners, could face a maximum prison sentence of 20 years and a fine of $500,000 on one of the conspiracy charges, and a sentence of five years and a fine of $250,000 on the other. His co-owners, Barry Downey and Reid Jackson, each face a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of $25,000. E-gold, a survivor of the first dotcom boom, says it has about 3 million registered accounts, facilitating about $10 million in transactions a day.
Internet sex educator Violet Blue has asked a court to serve a restraining order against Ben Burch, a Wikipedia editor. Blue's entry on Wikipedia has been home to almost as much conflict as the fallout from her deletion from the popular blog Boing Boing: her boyfriend, Jonathan Moore, is responsible for many of the entry's edits, prompting Burch and others to question whether he can observe the site's requirement for a neutral point of view regarding all subjects. Blue's response, based on documents forwarded to Valleywag, is to ask a court to declare Burch a threat to her physical safety.
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Latest by Paul Boutin: @Violet Blue: You are correct, this is not a lawsuit. I changed the post tag to "Nerdfight," which certainly applies. Sorry for the error. more »
FROM CONSUMERIST.COM:
Viacom is sending bogus copyright ownership claims and illegal posting notices to independent filmmakers posting their own movies on YouTube. These films contain not one iota of Viacom content.
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Investors — including top Valley VC firm Sequoia Capital — plan to kill FunnyOrDie spinoff BlueCollarOrDie, recently relaunched as Kung Fu Todd. Veteran TV producer and investor Larry Lyttle blamed the Internet for not attracting enough of the right kind of audience — people who like jokes that begin with the phrase "You might be a redneck." Lyttle told The Hollywood Reporter the site draws only 20,000 unique visitors per month. Our theory as to why is less complex even than Lyttle's: It's just not very funny. Check out "Hot Teacher," the site's "most buzzed" video and see for yourself.
What is Viacom really after in its $1 billion lawsuit against Google over YouTube? Despite a lengthy invite list, Viacom PR was only to drum up "a small press gathering" to listen to CEO Philippe Dauman at a screening for Tropic Thunder last night, according to Greg Sandoval's report on News.com. Dauman called YouTube a "rogue company" — and expressed disappointment that Google did nothing to rein it in. Viacom's now being painted as a rogue itself, seeking to violate YouTube users' privacy in requesting viewing logs from the site.
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Latest by mrfomoco: Owen wrote: 'Google's best defense ... airing reports about Viacom executives' use of the site.'
Ok, but why stop there? Why not screen Viacom IPs for _all_ potentially embarrassing searches. Better still, check out what their contract stars are up to. more »
Slydial is easy to explain: You sign up, then dial 267-SLYDIAL from any cellphone or land line. Enter the phone number whose voicemail you want — cell phones only — and Slydial lets you record and leave a voicemail message without ringing the other party's phone first. I can finally do my Leonard Cohen impression into my wife's inbox without disrupting her board meetings. Slydial limits you to one phone number per message. That's good — let the telemarketers dial us one at a time.
Want to mingle with a bunch of stock-option-laden Googlers? Brush up on your FCC spectrum-allocation rules and prepare for a lot of small talk about wireless broadband at the Telecom Council of Silicon Valley's "executive forum luncheon". (Freely available wireless spectrum is a pet cause at the Googleplex.) At the talk, you'll learn about the depressing reality of mobile development: Forget how good your iPhone app is — if you want to succeed in the wireless business, you need lobbyists in Washington. the even'ts being held at Nokia's Mountain View offices. Only slightly less depressing: The state of the real-estate market.
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Showing off electric carmaker Tesla's first Northern California dealership, general manager Tom O'Leary pointed past the $109,000 Roadsters littered about the showroom and out the front windows to a Coastal Gasoline station across the way. The station's sign read: $4.49 for a gallon of unleaded, $5.15 for diesel. "People ask me about signage," O'Leary told the San JoseMercury News. "I'm thinking of putting a sign here that says, 'How's that working out for you?'" So far, some 1,100 deposit-paying buyers have already answered O'Leary's question with a resounding: "Not well. Now take my money." Alas for those lovers of Earth and speed — it's going to be a while before they get their autos. Tesla plans to build only four Roadsters per week for the next two months. Until production ramps up, buyers will have to sate themselves with images of shiny Roadsters — like the ones from the dealership's opening, below, courtesy of Brian Solis.
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Latest by bjs: Unfortunately, it looks too much like a Honda S2000. Even the Lotus Elise on which its chassis is based looks better.
Did Elon borrow that vest from "G"? more »
South of the City and hard by the shores of San Francisco Bay, Genentech rarely attracts the attention of the founders of flashy Internet startups as they drive past its offices on the way to the airport. But the biotech company's longtime CEO, Art Levinson, is an integral part of the Silicon Valley scene, serving on the boards of both Google and Apple. That's why Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche's move to buy the 44 percent of Genentech it doesn't already own for a price north of $38 billion could have reverbations well beyond the world of automated pipetting systems.
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Latest by Shadowlayer: "They see the human genome as just another part of the world's information, which they've made it their mission to organize"
Riiiight, I'm sure that google becoming less and less profitable has nothing to do with it... more »
This partial screenshot from a tipster's Facebook homepage needs no explanation. He's since found the "ignore all" button. Here's the full version:
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At first we found lifecasting the most depressing thing around; now, the practice of living your life attached to a camera seems depressingly popular, Silicon Alley Insider reports. Justin.tv has reached 1 million registered users. The site still has no business model, but CEO Michael Seibel says the company is working on an online payments system that will let lifecasters hawk wares to their viewers. Cancel that bit about lifecasting being a downer: The prospect of letting a million QVCs bloom is far scarier.
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Finally realizing the dreams of advertising professionals since the 1950s, Amazon.com and Tivo announced new features to closely integrate shopping with TV watching. Viewers of talk shows — where pitching movies, music, or books vaguely masquerades as entertainment — will now have an opportunity to buy exactly what's being discussed on TV! Fancy the newest obsession of Oprah in her book club or like the CD being flogged by David Letterman's new favorite band? Just buy it with one click of TiVo's remote, and Amazon will deliver. If you like obvious product placements now, you're going to love the future. [NYT]
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