Author: Serkadis

With the latest iteration of the Google Books settlement, it looked like the company was finally in the clear and able to focus on the product instead of lawsuits but this, unfortunately, isn’t the case. While it may have quieted critics in the US, elsewhere, especially in Europe, there are plenty of people more than upset at Google’s nerve to make books more available to those who wouldn’t otherwise have the chance. This is the case in France, where Google will have to pay €300,000 ($430,000) to publisher La Martiniere for infringing on its copyright by scanning its books.

A Paris court found Google guilty of infringement for exposing fragments of the scanned books online. Google doesn’t allow users to actually access or view the entire books, rather it enables them to search the contents and displays short excerpts of the portion of the text containing the query.

Still, the French publisher demanded that it be paid for the content and, in the original claim La Martiniere, the French Publishers’ Association and authors’ group SGDL, the parties who filed the lawsuit, asked for damages of €15 million for the crime. The judge found in the plaintiff’s favor, but the damages issued fell way short of the demands.

However, on top of the initial fine, Google will also have to pay an addit… (read more)

 

Research in Motion (RIMM) has broken above $70 after the company reported that they are killing it right now.

 

They've just shipped a record number BlackBerries, beat expectations, and gave strong guidance.

Check out Dan Frommer's earnings breakdown here.

Thus RIMM is reporting their best ever shipments... yet its stock, even after today's pop, is well below its own record levels, and even below this year's high around $85. Now watch the momentum traders come back.

The author does not own shares of RIMM.

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See Also:

• Microsoft Needs To Buy Research In Motion
• Microsoft Should Buy Research In Motion
• Barclays Fetes Fixed Income Research In The Fancy Executive Dining Room

Don’t mess with a fake CEO. That’s the lesson of the week. At the beginning of the week, “Fake Steve Jobs” (aka Dan Lyons) got a lot of attention for his rather funny fake phone call with AT&T boss Randall Stephenson where he tells him to fix his wireless network that has been receiving so many complaints from iPhone users. As that post got more and more attention, FSJ came back with another satirical idea: Operation Chokehold. The idea is that at noon Pacific time today (Friday, the 18th) iPhone users around the country should turn on the most data intensive apps they have and run them for an hour, to signal their displeasure with the problems with AT&T’s network.

Remember, this is a fake online persona who has blogged outrageous satire for years.

But AT&T apparently took it seriously, calling it irresponsible and pointless. And then, the FCC got into the game, again calling it irresponsible and warning of public safety concerns. Of course, all this has done is draw a lot more attention to the whole thing.

But even more interesting? It got people to actually look at the details of AT&T’s operations, and its “woe is me” position on its wireless network. Except… well, the numbers tell a story AT&T doesn’t want you to hear. Specifically, they keep making more and more in the way of money, but they’re spending less and less on investment in its wireless network. While there’s obviously a lot more that goes into those sorts of numbers, the numbers don’t make AT&T’s claims sound particularly convincing (Update: Email from AT&T PR wants to reinforce the fact that the numbers shown include more than just direct network investment, such as real estate, call centers and IT support. They also claim that the real numbers — the ones we don’t see — are going up, but provide no evidence. Of course, why AT&T reps don’t comment on this post and explain that to people… remains unknown). While we agree that creating a denial of service attack is not a good idea, AT&T’s response to all of this has only sunk the company in deeper. It’s making a ton of money, and its network sucks… and despite claims of fixing it, they’ve been spending less and less on the network. It seems like that’s a lot more irresponsible than worrying about a random fake CEO.

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One of the most successful start-ups in recent years, Ontela, has agreed to join forces with the Internet’s biggest photo storage service, PhotoBucket. The new company will be known as PhotoBucket Corporation and will be run by Ontela’s chief financial officer, Tom Munro. He will be president of the new entity, while Jon Miller, chairman and CEO of Digital Media for News Corporation, will be director.

News Corporation, which acquired PhotoBucket in 2007, will still hold a significant stake in the new firm, while Ontela’s investors will have to make a new capital commitment to ensure an equal stake in the new corporation.

This development comes as a long awaited decision from Ontela to go forward with a bigger company. Since its launch, interest has been rising in the start-up, to a point where it was considered the hottest prospect on the stock market.

Ontela’s services are considered not only top-of-the-line, but also ground-breaking and innovative. Customers taking pictures with their mobiles have the ability to automatically store them directly on their computer or on various online storage services like PhotoBucket, Flickr, Blogger, Snapfish or Shutterfly.

Currently, the service has seen large adoption across wireless carriers including T-Mobile, Verizon, Alltel or United Wireless. This detail right… (read more)

Filed under: Etc., Government/Legal, Chrysler, GM, Earnings/Financials

Planning for the future is perhaps an alien concept to big business – even automakers, with their protracted product development cycles. Take a cue of what not to do from them, then, and start planning now for next Christmas. May we suggest that your 2010 wishlist starts with what’s destined to be a hotly-anticipated tome: Steven Rattner’s memoir of his spearheading the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler. Tentatively titled “Overhaul,” the cloyingly-named book will tell the story of the quick-rinse bankruptcies Rattner presided over.

A fascinating piece that Rattner wrote for Fortune Magazine back in October gave us a glimpse of how riveting such a seemingly-dry subject can be. The book is on track for a debut in the fall of 2010, and might be even more interesting in a year depending on how Rattner’s deals work out. The hardest part is going to be behaving well enough for an entire year so this thing gets stuffed in our stocking.

[Source: The Detroit News | Image: Neilson Barnard/Getty]

Christmas List 2010: Rattner’s book to debut in time for next Christmas originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Alcan Composites Core Materials is keeping up its fast pace of innovation in PET foam products. In March 2009, the new AIREX® T92 was introduced featuring highly increased damage tolerance thus qualifying T92 as a cost-effective core material for the majority of sandwich applications.
Today, ALCAN COMPOSITES introduces a renewed AIREX® T90 – the economical structural core material for applications with high flame, smoke and toxicity (FST) requirements.

The renewed AIREX® T90 exhibits largely improved mechanical properties: damage tolerance – to name the most outstanding improvement – has been raised four-fold from 2.5% to 10%, Shear strength, another important design property, has been increased by over 30%. Other key features of AIREX® T90 include high temperature performance, exceptional fatigue resistance, compatibility with all common resins and recyclability.

Renewed AIREX® T90 has already been certified according to today’s relevant FST standards like NF, DIN, FAR. Furthermore, tests have shown that the new material can also comply with CEN TS 45’545 given the appropriate sandwich design.

These achievements clearly demonstrate and further expand ALCAN COMPOSITES’ leadership as a pioneer in the field of PET core materials – a success story that started in 2005 with the introduction of AIREX® T90 as the first PET-based core material.

With the renewed AIREX® T90 and the high performance foam AIREX® R82 ALCAN COMPOSITES is at the cutting edge of FST approved core materials by offering customers two powerful products to meet every requirement for fire resistant sandwich cores.

ALCAN COMPOSITES’ broadest portfolio of core materials allows customers to perfectly optimize every sandwich structure. With the Hybrid Core Concept®, customers can combine different materials according to their optimisation criteria (weight, cost, sustainability) to get a highly customized sandwich solution.

Contact for media inquiries:

Alcan Airex AG
Industrie Nord
5643 Sins
Switzerland
Email: [email protected]
Homepage: www.corematerials.alcancomposites.com

The latest issue of V-Jump features a very welcome Naruto triple-header, and based from the info that the Japanese gaming mag scored, our favorite Konoha Shinobi pulled another Kage Bunshin. You bet, there’s gonna be a lot

A Verizon bound LG Windows Mobile smartphone has been rumoured, and has shown up on the Bluetooth SIG website.

The handset is said to be dual CDMA/GSM and feature and very thin form factor.

Stay tuned for more as we receive it.

Via Unwiredview.com

There are a lot of gold bulls out there who advocate playing the mining stocks, instead of the metal, arguing that through the miners you’re getting leverage.

That may be true.

But leverage works in reverse.

In this case it works like this: one month of gold declines = six months worth of gains destroyed.

MineWeb, which performed the survey, continues to harp on a big problem at the miners. In the end, they really don’t produce that much cash:

Looking at global Tier I gold diggers – representative groups which have mines of various ages – Newmont is currently priced at US$47.63 a share, a level first recorded in the latter parts of 2003. A similar profile is produced by the NYSE pricing for AngloGold Ashanti. Kinross is now trading at levels it first attained in the latter parts of 2007, as is Barrick, the world’s biggest gold miner by value and output. Goldcorp, a comparatively new name, is trading around levels first notched up during a spike in May 2006.

Leaving aside the issue of forecasting the gold bullion price – forever a mug’s game – there may be increasing concerns that gold miners are simply not producing cash in line with other performance metrics generally presented to investors. Thursday’s blow off in the Agnico Eagle stock price was associated with technical presentations given by the company, which included information that while production would roughly double in 2010 to about 1.05m ounces, costs could rise to nearly USD 400/oz. Agnico Eagle’s cash costs have risen from USD 162/0z to an estimated USD 340/oz for 2009.

All of these numbers are impressive, given the level of gold bullion prices, but the insistence of gold companies blasting out cash costs in a vacuum may be wearing thin. Reference Agnico Eagle’s financial statements and these will show that since 1 January 2007, the group has produced cumulative negative free cash flow of USD 1.5bn, computed by aggregating operating cash flow and cash spent on capital expenditure.

Read the whole story >>

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See Also:

• Everyone Is Still Massively Long Gold
• CIBC: There Is No Gold Bubble, Diversification And A Mining Shortage Will Push It To $1400
• Goldman: Oil Going To $90, Gold To $1350

Through December 16, same-store sales growth at large online retailers, including Amazon.com (AMZN), is up more that 15% year-over-year.

The sales firgures are according to Chase Paymentech’s Pulse Index, a payments processor which handled ~50% of all Internet transactions in 2008, according to JP Morgan analyst Imran Khan.

Some other takeaways:

• Online sales volume is up 25% y/y. Says Imran: “We view this as an indication of consumers’ increasing comfort with online shopping.”
• Average ticket sizes are down (~8% y/y) but getting bigger by the day — down only 5% over the past two weeks.

 

 

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See Also:

• Huge Kindle Sales Will Drive Amazon To The Moon Next Year
• Amazon’s New Video Streaming Service Will Disrupt The CDN Industry
• Amazon’s Latest eBook Deal Is A Watershed, Will Increase Pressure On Publishers

Filed under: GM, Saab, Earnings/Financials

After a protracted saga that has seen bidders drop in-and-out and old model tooling and assets sold off to the Chinese, the enigmatic brand known as Saab is dead. In a press release issued this morning, General Motors announced that the “intended sale of Saab Automobile AB would not be concluded.” GM had been in talks with Dutch exoticmakers Spyker Cars after pursuing a number of other buyer leads (including the aborted sale with Koenigsegg), but The General says that in the course of due diligence, the resolution of certain unspecified issues became impossible in the time frame that they had set for themselves.

As such, GM will immediately begin the “wind down” of the much-loved yet perpetually unprofitable cult brand, but says it will continue to honor warranties and provide spare parts and service – presumably through other GM brand dealers – as Saab dealers go offline. Officials note that this is not a bankruptcy or forced liquidation situation, so outstanding creditors should still expect to receive payment.

It is not clear what will happen to the production-ready 2010 9-5, nor the current 9-3/9-3X model and almost-ready 9-4X. Official death certificate available after the jump, historical slide show of the brand in photographs viewable below.

[Source: General Motors]

Continue reading BREAKING: Swedish Patient Succumbs – Deal for Saab is dead on the table, GM to wind down brand

BREAKING: Swedish Patient Succumbs – Deal for Saab is dead on the table, GM to wind down brand originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 18 Dec 2009 09:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tax cap, property tax appeals will limit amount College will collect

(PALATINE, IL) The Harper College Board of Trustees adopted the College’s annual estimated tax levy following a public hearing at the regular meeting on Thursday, December 17, 2009.

The total levy for 2009 is $64,112,301, a decrease of four-tenths of one percent (0.4%) from the previous year’s final extension.

The amount of property tax revenue that Harper will be able to collect, however, is governed by the state’s property tax cap. The tax cap restricts the amount of money a taxing body can collect to five percent over the previous year’s extension or the current rate of inflation, whichever is less. The current CPI is 0.1 percent.

The College also anticipates losing $1.6 million in revenue to successful property tax appeals from commercial property owners in 2010. Since 2003, Harper has lost $9.4 million in revenue from successful tax appeals made to the Property Tax Appeals Board (PTAB).

The estimated tax rate for all Harper College tax-capped funds is 19.66 cents per $100 of assessed valuation for 2009. That represents a decline of two-tenths of one percent (0.2%) from 2008, when Harper’s tax rate was 19.70 cents per $100 of assessed valuation.

The board first reviewed the property tax levy at its October 15, 2009 meeting.

 

Filed under: Hybrid, Ford

According to the latest report from the Environmental Protection Agency, Ford has scored the biggest improvement in combined fuel economy of any major carmaker over the last five years. Between 2005 and 2009, Ford improved its fleet average by nearly 20 percent – almost twice as much as any other company. While Ford certainly made a lot of incremental improvements in the efficiency of its vehicles over that period, that wasn’t the only factor.

That same time period saw a huge shift in the model mix at Ford. Sales of SUVs like the Explorer and Expedition collapsed as consumers moved to crossovers like the Edge and Flex (oh, and we suppose a car or two). The Explorer has gone from more than 400,000 annual sales earlier this decade to just over 68,000 last year.

Ford has made actual improvements, as well, however, including the introduction of the Escape Hybrid and the roll out of six-speed transmissions. The next five years should see even bigger gains as Ford deploys millions of EcoBoost engines, battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. Ford’s official press release is after the jump.

[Source: Ford]

Continue reading Ford claims biggest five-year fuel economy improvement among major automakers

Ford claims biggest five-year fuel economy improvement among major automakers originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 18 Dec 2009 09:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Deflationary forces remain strong in the U.S. economy. The chart below shows M3, in green, which is the broadest measure for money supply. The black and blue lines show its rate of decline. Essentially money supply is shrinking, which is deflationary, and thus dollar-strengthening.

The Big Picture: …it’s hard to see how consumer prices are going to be bid higher anytime soon, given a chart like the one above.

Of course, if banks ever start lending some of their massive reserves, an entirely different dynamic could quickly develop and the recent trend could quickly reverse, but, fortunately, our central bank leaders have assured us that they’re on top of that particular situation.

This is why the Ben Bernanke isn’t worried about inflationary threats right now:

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See Also:

• Rosenberg: Deflation Is Reality, The Consensus View Is Garbage
• DEFLATION: Oil Now On Its Longest Losing Streak In Eight Years
• The Next Leg Of Deflation Has Begun

Google is a great proponent of web apps as alternative to native ones, be it desktop applications or mobile ones. Its point of view may be skewed by the fact that it does most of its revenue online and most of its major products are very much anchored in the cloud, but the company does a great enough job with its own products that the results backup all of its claims. Now Google is showing off the progress it made with the mobile version of Gmail using HTML 5 features to bring the experience on par with that of the native apps.

For mobile devices, native apps are a necessity as, until now, web apps could hardly match them in performance and features. This poses a problem for developers as mobile OSs are as diverse as the manufacturers that use them and even a focus on the most popular ones, iPhone OS, Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Palm’s Web OS to a lesser degree, still means a lot of development time and effort.

Web apps offer a great alternative as developers only have to build once, but this leaves them with the performance problem. Google, though, says things are on the right track and has pushed to make the mobile version of Gmail to be as close as possible to the regular one and to the native apps which Google offers for most platforms.

Google has been making good … (read more)

Filed under: Car Buying, Minivan/Van, Toyota, Luxury

Toyota has just released the full spec sheet for their 2011 Sienna minivan. This third-generation people hauler should be in dealerships by February with your choice of five different trim levels, the carryover 266-horsepower, 3.5-liter V6 or a newly available 187 horsepower, 2.7-liter four-cylinder, and front- or all-wheel drive. They ride on an updated version of the current platform but feature extensive reinforcements to increase rigidity and drastically revised suspensions. They also use a new hill-logic-equipped six-speed automatic transmission. While the Sienna hasn’t grown externally, there is more space inside and the Sienna has gained about 100 pounds.

The lightest four-cylinder models weigh in at 4,275 lbs., while the V6 adds just 30 pounds to that total. With mileage ratings that are only 1-2 MPG better than the bent six and such a small weight penalty, we question how many people will opt for the four-banger. It will surely come down to pricing (which has not been announced yet). Sienna AWD buyers will pay a 200-pound penalty, but they are the only ones to get third-gen Bridgestone runflats. While no towing figures were released for the 2.7-liter, the 2011 Sienna is rated at 3,500 pounds with the V6.

Toyota has announced that they will be simplifying their vehicle combinations with the Sienna, so there are fewer individual options and more packages. Major options packages include Preferred Packages for LE and SE that add XLE-like features, and Entertainment (16-inch Dual-View rear video screen) and Premium Packages for XLE and Limited that consist of the Entertainment package plus a touch-screen navigation system and a JBL sound system. Navi can be ordered separately on XLE and Limited as well. The slick Lounge Seating equipped Limited can also be ordered with a Convenience Package (HIDs with auto-off and automatic high beams as well as rain sensing wipers) and the Advanced Technology Package, which adds such Lexus-like features as Dynamic Radar Cruise Control (DRCC), Pre-Collision System (PCS), Vehicle Dynamics Integrated Management System (VDIM), and Hill Assist Control (HAC). If you can’t wait, you can read all of the stats and features in the lengthy press release after the jump, or you can just wait until around 12pm Eastern time when we publish our first drive. Stay tuned.

[Source: Toyota]

Continue reading Toyota releases full product information guide for 2011 Sienna

Toyota releases full product information guide for 2011 Sienna originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 18 Dec 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While I’m writing and you guys are reading, the Japanese are tucked comfortably in their gaming dens right now, playing Final Fantasy XIII. You’re not gonna see FF fans out in streets in Japan tonight…or this weekend.

Here’s a shock:

Bloomberg:

Iranian forces yesterday entered Iraqi territory at dawn, and occupied well number 4 in the East Maysan field in al-Fakah region, 450 kilometers (280 miles) south of Baghdad, Border Guard General Zaser Nazmi said. The Iranian forces positioned tanks around the well.

The border guard’s comments couldn’t be immediately verified independently.

“They positioned tanks around it and dug trenches,” Nazmi said by phone from Basra. “They are still there, they raised the flag.”

Other outlets are reporting the story as well.

AFP cites a US military spokesman who says the incident was non-violent and that there was hope for a diplomatic solution.

Update: Oil has spiked to $74.

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See Also:

• The Iraqi Oil Auction Was Like A High-Stakes American Idol
• Obama Won’t Stop Iran From Getting Nukes, Harvard Simulation Shows
• Iran Seizes British Yacht, Oil Soars