Archive for July 3rd, 2012If you’ve been on the fence about Android, or tablets in general, this is the tablet you’ve been waiting for.
Jul
03
2012
 
Ratio of PC to Mac Sales Narrowing to Lowest Level in Over a DecadePosted by: wiredtechbiz in Wired Tech BizApple must be doing something right in the PC space — or PC makers or doing something wrong. The ratio of PC sales to Mac sales has dropped to the lowest point in about 15 years.
Jul
03
2012
Android Director: ‘We Have the First Natural-Sounding Synthesized Voice in the World’Posted by: wiredtechbiz in Wired Tech BizGoogle’s Hugo Barra, the product manager for Android, talks with Wired about what’s new for the world’s most popular mobile operating system: Google’s voice, Google Now, Jelly Bean and the Asus Nexus 7 tablet.
Users and developers may be howling over Twitter’s crackdown on third-party apps, but the intent is clear: Twitter wants to gain more Apple-like control over the Twitter user experience.
As a country, we’ve made a historical commitment to ensuring that virtually every American has access to reasonably priced, standard, high-quality communications. Our national phone system was the envy of the world when it was first built. Now we’re moving to a time of deep communications inequality.
Jul
03
2012
Oil Prices May Have Hit Bottom: Expert Sees Energy Prices RisingPosted by: yahootechticker in Yahoo Tech TickerFollow The Daily Ticker on Facebook! Global energy prices are moving sharply higher Tuesday morning on news that Iran was attempting to disrupt oil supplies by blocking the Strait of Hormuz waterway. Brent crude topped $100 a barrel for the first time in three weeks and U.S. oil futures for August delivery gained nearly 5 [...]
Jul
03
2012
Mitt Romney Made $22 Million In 2010, Paid Only $3 Million in TaxesPosted by: yahootechticker in Yahoo Tech TickerNow that Mitt Romney has a good shot at becoming the next President of the United States, it seems time to give his tax returns a good read. After all, Mitt Romney is an unusual Presidential candidate, in that he is totally loaded. (Not just rich–loaded). And unlike some loaded people who run for office, [...]
Jul
03
2012
With Crisis in Europe Ebbing, Focus Shifts to Struggling U.S. EconomyPosted by: yahootechticker in Yahoo Tech TickerEnough with all that interesting stuff going on overseas. For too long, the Europeans have been able to grab our attention with their soccer and tennis tournaments, quaint bicycle races, and truly unquaint financial crises. With the latest summit seeming to have resolved, for now, Spain and Italy’s sovereign debt crisis, and with Independence Day [...]
Jul
03
2012
Why Corn Prices Matter To Your Bottom LinePosted by: yahootechticker in Yahoo Tech TickerFollow The Daily Ticker on Facebook! Corn prices have spiked roughly 30 percent in the last month because of droughts and extreme heat conditions in the Midwest. Corn prices for December delivery rose another 3 percent on Tuesday to $6.56 a bushel. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported additional crop deterioration in its weekly crop [...] Yesterday Microsoft announced the write off of $6.2bn of the $6.3bn it paid for interactive ad company aQuantive in 2007. The aQuantive acquisition came hot on the heals of Google’s $3.1bn acquisition of Doubleclick and was clear evidence of Microsoft’s ambitions to be a serious player in online advertising. After the deal Ballmer said that advertising would become 25% of his company’s business within a few years. Unfortunately this prediction has not come to pass. In the quarter to March 2012 Microsoft’s Online Services Division (OSD) saw revenues of $707m which was about 4% of total revenues, and it lost $479m. Microsoft has downplayed expectations for future growth in OSD which includes Bing, MSN and adCenter. The FT quotes analysts suggesting they should sell the division to Facebook. To my knowledge the last aggressive move that Microsoft made in Adtech was participating in a $50m funding round in Appnexus back in 2010, and it looks very much like their ambitions in this sector are fading. For Adtech startups looking for an exit strategy this is bad news. AOL and Yahoo have both pretty much left the market and Google is now the only large scale serial acquirer left. There are a bunch of mid-sized players, and Facebook and Apple are increasingly important forces, but none of these are predictable enough to build a strategy around. I think that all of this will result in profit becoming an increasingly important metric for adtech businesses looking to exit for more than a couple of hundred million dollars. I see all of these benchmarks as knobs to turn and adjust to maximize the effectiveness of MindGear. In reality though I don’t know ahead of time where these knobs should be set. The data I’ve collected gives me some comfort that I know generally where to set things, but for instance I won’t know whether I need an employee for every four, five or six customers until I start operating and see how things go. Hopefully I’ll be in the right operating range on all my knobs, that way my engine won’t explode in my face when I first crank it.
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