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The Washington region was paralyzed by a blizzard that dumped more than two feet of heavy snow on the area by late Saturday, knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of people, toppling trees and reducing many streets to pedestrian pathways.
Almost 218,000 homes and business were without power at the outages’ peak, and many had no heat midday Saturday at the height of the storm. By late last night, about 140,000 were still in the dark. Pepco advised customers to seek other lodging, saying it could take days to restore power to everyone. Some residents abandoned their cold, dark houses and checked into hotels. Others were trapped on side streets as snowplows concentrated on keeping major arteries clear. -
For a company that makes no products, Acacia Research (ACTG) spends a lot of time fighting over patents in court. Acacia has filed at least 337 patent-related lawsuits in its 18 years. To make money—sales are expected to rise to $68.8 million this year, from $34.8 million in 2006—Acacia acquires patents from inventors and then seeks fees from companies that it says infringe on those patents. Because Acacia licenses technologies it doesn’t design or distribute, it is known as a “nonpracticing entity.”
Executives at many tech companies—and their investors—call Acacia and its peers a different name: “patent trolls.”
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We all know Marissa Mayer is a tech nerd turned fashionista, and it looks like her taste for designer clothes is rubbing off on the search giant.
But unlike the media or mobile industries, the fashion industry appears safe from Google. Google is selling “Google-inspired” scarves and other clothing to the public that were designed by emerging designers. Last year, designers who participated in a Vogue and Council of Fashion Designer program were asked to create a one-of-a-kind item inspired by Google in some way that reflected Google’s aura. Google transformed the finalists creations into iGoogle Artists themes but selected three of the designers to produce and sell their Google-inspired couture. -
Google on Thursday began offering administrators of its paid productivity applications the ability to manage iPhones, Nokia E series and Windows Mobile devices remotely, a feature that may appeal both to business users and consumers.
Google charges $50 per year for Google Apps Premier Edition accounts, which are designed for corporate needs. Google Apps Premier includes Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Video, and Google Groups, and comes with 25GB of e-mail storage per employee. The service is interoperable with BlackBerry and Microsoft Outlook and includes business controls like password strength checks, forced SSL connections, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee SLA.
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It used to be that Twitter followers were worth something, or at least people thought they were worth something, which is the same thing. It was only about a year ago when Jason Calacanis was offering $250,000 to buy a spot on Twitter’s Suggested User List, which would have guaranteed him perhaps a million followers before Twitter ended up revamping the SUL to be less monolithic. He never got on the list, but if his offer would have come to roughly $0.25 per follower.
Today, you can “buy” followers on eBay for less than a penny each. Some of the Buy-It-Now listings include 5,000 followers for $20 (which comes to 0.4 penny/follower), $5,500 for $40 (0.7 penny/follower), $1,100 for $10 (0.9 penny/follower). You are not actually buying followers outright (Twitter doesn’t allow people to transfer their followers), but rather services which “guarantee” getting your account up to the promised number of followers through “proven and safe methods.” -
Users of Apple Inc.’s popular iPhone may now be able to save money by making Internet-based phone calls over AT&T Inc.’s cellular network.
Apple this week allowed new versions of several Voice over Internet Protocol services to begin working on the iPhone, according to those services. Previously, iPhone users needed a wireless Internet connection to make such calls, but the change will allow calls from anywhere that receives a strong enough 3G cellular signal.
By using VoIP applications to sidestep the phone’s normal calling software, iPhone owners could avoid using up their monthly allocation of minutes from AT&T, potentially allowing them to choose cheaper plans.
Who doesn't the love the Muppets? If you are fan (or used to be as a kid), you will want to watch this fun video. It is the Muppets singing Bohemian Rhapsody, and I am sure Freddy Mercury would be proud! Happy Thanksgiving everyone. 🙂
Life, business, politics, competition, family… These things can all be challenging at times. Stress in inevitable. Over the years, I have determined that the most valuable tool you can acquire for managing these challenges is "perspective" or "context".
When you think about the big picture and put your daily stresses into a proper context or perspective, you often realize how minor the bumps are. In the short run, challenges can seem huge and the desire for quick fixes is strong. I like to call this the "chase the shiny object" syndrome. For organizations, "chase the shiny object" syndrome leads to inevitable failure.
In the long run, most challenges are manageable. By staying focused on the big picture and by continuing to put one foot in front of the other, you can make amazing progress that compounds on itself to create success. Intuitively, we all know this, but it is often hard to keep that state of mind when you are in the weeds and when the pressure is on for instant success.
As a leader in your organization, it is always important to keep folks focused on the big picture… to give your team perspective and context on what is going on around them. Create a roadmap or plan. Concentrate on execution. Put one foot in front of the other over and over again. One morning months later, the team will wake up and be pleasantly shocked to see how far they have traveled and how much they have accomplished.
If you want the ultimate perspective, watch this video. It is awe inspiring to me, and it certainly puts our daily, personal challenges into a much bigger picture. 🙂
It is hard for me to believe, but today is the nine year anniversary of buySAFE’s birthdate. Time sure does fly by when you are having a good time.
When I left buySAFE a few months ago, I promised to keep you up to date on my next entrepreneurial adventure. In the spirit of start-up birthdays, I thought I would share with you a few interesting details about my next venture.
Obviously, buySAFE was founded to make the Internet safer for online shoppers, and we did that for tens of millions of consumers. This time around, we want to make technology safer for our kids (Fatherhood has a way of inspiring you to do such things). Our new start-up is tackling two serious, prevalent and complex problems: Sexting and Predators. The market simply hasn’t provided any effective solutions for parents yet, and we intend to fill that gap.
The business was inspired by my brother, Tim Woda, who as the parent of older children, has had to confront these difficult issues directly. It seems like every time I speak with a parent of tweens or teens, they express the same frustrations and fear about allowing their kids to use digital technologies. Since there are more than 37 million kids in the U.S. and more than 1.2 billion kids globally between the ages of 9 and 17, I believe there is an interesting business opportunity here.
The following is a short video overview of the Sexting and Predator problems that parents face today. If you have any feedback or suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment. I welcome your assistance. Also, please share this video with your friends and family. I believe it is important that we educate parents to make sure they are fully aware of the digital dangers they must manage on behalf of their kids.
I recognize that I haven’t told you how we are going to attack these scary problems, but I will over the coming months. I wanted to tease you first! 🙂 Before telling you everything, we have to finish building out our product and raise a bit of capital to finance our public launch. Both of these activities are ongoing (and going well), and I will share more as we make additional progress.
I will continue to provide you with regular updates here on this blog, but if you want to get more frequent updates, feel free to become a fan on my Facebook Fan Page. I am using it to share my daily thoughts on this start-up adventure. Thanks, and stay tuned!
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A company that’s redesigning its Web site recently called me to discuss the possibility of my firm assisting them with their SEO efforts. First, I congratulated them on being one of the few companies to consider SEO prior to re-launching their site (that’s the way it’s done, people!). Then we talked about their domain name.
This company was planning to move their site to a new domain because the old domain (and by “old,” I mean 10 years old) no longer represented the company. As many of us do, they typed in about 100 different domain names into GoDaddy’s search and eventually found an available domain name that was more in line with their core business.
One problem: their domain name choice was absolutely horrible. It had five keywords crammed together. It was confusing, hard to recall, and terrible for branding, SEO purposes, and any other measurement that you wanted to put to it.
But, the domain name only cost $9.99 per year. What a deal, right? -
Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) on Monday outlined a host of new features that will be included in its forthcoming Office 2010 home and business productivity suite. Not surprisingly, many are geared toward users steeped in Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other popular Web 2.0 tools.
For starters, Microsoft revealed that the Office 2010 release, slated for the first half of next year, will include free Web versions of Excel, PowerPoint, Office, and Notepad. The move is in keeping with the “Work anywhere” theme the company has attached to its new offering.
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UnitedHealth Group and Cisco (NSDQ: CSCO) Wednesday announced they're launching a multi-million dollar initiative to build a national telehealth network. Although the initial focus is on patients in rural and inner city communities, the companies envision providing a platform for delivering health services wherever distance or shortages of clinicians present obstacles to affordable care.
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While Apple's App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch is drawing a lot of attention in the application space, GetJar said Wednesday its mobile store has surpassed over a half billion downloads.
The company offers an independent over-the-air app store that enables users to browse, buy, download, and install programs onto a variety of handsets including smartphones and feature phones. The company offers more than 50,000 apps in over 200 countries, and GetJar has been chosen to handle the backend for Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson's upcoming app store.
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A few tips for employees regarding Internet and cell phone use:
— Remember that anything you do on a company-issued computer or cell phone — in or out of the office — could be tracked by a boss, the courts or a regulator. Many employers monitor Web site use, keystrokes, instant messages and e-mail. Some even archive text messages on work cell phones. -
Even in this dismal job market, opportunities do exist for talented individuals, as companies look to upgrade their human capital and benefit from the fluctuating talent pool. Part of my job involves regularly talking to business leaders about their hiring needs. And in recent conversations with executives in the technology and marketing spheres, I’ve found that most everyone agrees on certain key points that help resumes stand out.
Whether you’re unemployed, underemployed, or simply looking for an opportunity to grow and prove your professional worth, this is a climate you can and should take advantage of.
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Cliched forms of speech are crutches for the uncreative. And the frequency of their usage make them absolutely meaningless.
So do you want your resume to say, above everything else, that you are incapable of forming a new thought? No, you don’t. You also don’t want the people reviewing your resume to gloss over these trite phrases and not give you a chance. That’s why you should strike every occurrence of the following from your resume: -
Soon after Google announced plans for its own operating system (OS), called Google Chrome OS, on Tuesday night, the Web giant clammed up about technical details, saying that the project is still at too early a stage. The first netbook devices running Chrome OS won't be released until the second half of 2010, so most users will have to wait until then to find out precisely how the software will work. But that doesn't mean there aren't hints out there already, and the biggest clues can be found in Google's Chrome browser, which the company says will be a key part of the new OS.