2018 Shell Jewelry weblogs

Skype admitted earlier this year that it’s working on an application for the iPhone. Scott Durchslag, the company’s chief operating officer, said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January that an iPhone version of the software client would be coming to Apple’s App Store.

Now, iPhone users will get to use Skype, too. But before iPhone users get too excited, there’s probably a big catch. The new Skype app for the iPhone will likely be restricted to Wi-Fi networks only, as Apple has done to other third-party services like Fring, which offers access to Skype.

Skype, the Internet calling service owned by eBay, is expected to announce an application for the
iPhone at next week’s wireless
CTIA tradeshow in Las Vegas, according to tech blogger Om Malik of GigaOM.

Skype sees mobile as the next major growth area for its business. Not only does it expect its more than 405 million registered users to take their Skype experience, which offers free and low-cost calling, with them on-the-go, but the company also believes they will be able to reach new users via mobile devices. By putting the peer-to-peer service, which uses the Internet to carry voice traffic, onto a mobile phone, it becomes very convenient to use. The regular Skype service runs on a computer and requires either a special phone or a headset and microphone to make and receive phone calls.

“We have to make sure the call quality is there and the application works really well before we can announce the software for any device,” he said in an interview after the company’s press conference. “But we will have something for the iPhone as soon as it’s perfect.”

If this is the case, it will be a huge limitation to the usefulness of the service. While other mobile phone users can use the Skype service anywhere they can a cell phone signal, iPhone users will be restricted to only using it where they can access Wi-Fi. Most people access Wi-Fi home or in the office, where they’re likely to be near a computer anyway.

(Credit:
Apple)

In the U.S. most cell phone plans include domestic long-distance calling as part of a bundle of minutes, so the Skype service isn’t really that appealing. But for subscribers calling outside the U.S., rates can be as much as a $2 a minute if cell phone users don’t subscribe to a special monthly plan for making international calls. This makes the Skype mobile client most appealing to users who want to make inexpensive international calls, but don’t want to be tied to their computers.

A software version of Skype already exists for Windows Mobile phones. Nokia also plans to embed some of its phones with Skype clients. And Skype has worked with a company called iSkoot to develop a special Skype phone that is sold by the cell phone operator Hutchison 3 U.K. A Skype-lite version of the client is also available on some Java phones.

Skype is keeping mum on the announcement and has declined to comment on the rumors. But the company is hosting a press conference Tuesday afternoon in Las Vegas the day before the show kicks off. And it’s likely the news will be announced there.

Existing U.S. paid search advertisers increase third quarter spending over year ago figures.

“Retail had issues throughout the year, but it hasn’t affected all sectors,” Barnette said, noting that travel, media, and the non-mortgage area of financial services have remained strong.

And more surprisingly, retailers significantly scaled back their paid search advertising for the month of September, resulting in a 10 percent drop in year-over-year retail advertising spending compared with September 2007. The decline occurred despite a slight increase in click-through conversion rates and the average value of orders for the months of August and September.

But while paid search increased overall by double digits during the quarter, retail advertisers increased their search spending by a modest 1.5 percent.

In the coming days, however, a more telling sign of retailer sentiment and their outlook for the fourth quarter will become evident, given that this sector usually ramps up its paid search advertising beginning in mid-October through mid-December, noted Roger Barnette, SearchIgnite president.

(Credit:
SearchIgnite)

During this year’s third quarter, Google increased its lead in search advertising, capturing 72 percent of all U.S. search advertising dollars, according to the SearchIgnite report. And while Yahoo lost a small portion of its market share in the third quarter, coming in just above 20 percent, it has increased its market share during the first nine months of the year over last year. MSN, meanwhile, remains relatively flat with approximately 0.8 percent of the market.

And heading into the fourth quarter, paid search advertising overall is exhibiting signs of typical growth rates, Barnette noted. During last year’s fourth quarter, advertisers increased the amount they spent on search advertising by 37.3 percent.

U.S. paid search rose 26.9 percent year over year in the third quarter, despite weakness in the economy and markets, according to a report released Tuesday by SearchIgnite.

Microsoft recently opposed Google’s proposed ad-sharing deal with Yahoo, which Google ultimately abandoned in the face of antitrust scrutiny.

This is not the first time Google and Microsoft have locked horns on antitrust issues. In 2006, the search giant expressed concern over Microsoft embedding Web search functionality into its Vista operating system. Microsoft ultimately agreed to make changes to the desktop search feature to head off a further antitrust battle with U.S. regulators.

Google also opposed Microsoft’s failed bid to acquire Yahoo, saying it raised “troubling questions.”

The Web search giant, which recently released its Chrome Web browser, announced Tuesday that it is applying to be a “third party” in the European proceedings, which will entitle it to receive access to confidential documents in the case and the ability to voice objections. Sundar Pichai, a Google vice president for product management, explained the company’s reasoning in a company blog:

Apple’s
Safari rounds out the top three with 8.29 percent of the browser market.
Google’s Chrome browser, launched in September 2008, has 1.12 percent of the market, having overtaken Opera in November. Opera’s share of the market now stands at 0.7 percent.

The request follows the EU’s recent decision to grant third-party access to Mozilla, the organization behind the popular
Firefox browser. Mitchell Baker, Mozilla’s chair, voiced concerns similar to Google’s–that tying IE to the Windows operating system harms competition for Web browsers and reduces consumer choice.

Google believes that the browser market is still largely uncompetitive, which holds back innovation for users. This is because Internet Explorer is tied to Microsoft’s dominant computer operating system, giving it an unfair advantage over other browsers. Compare this to the mobile market, where Microsoft cannot tie Internet Explorer to a dominant operating system, and its browser therefore has a much lower usage. The value of competition for users (even in the limited form we see today) is clear: tabbed browsing, faster downloads, private browsing features, and more.

Google wants to help the European Commission prove antitrust charges against Microsoft related to the software giant’s dominance of the Web browser market.

The Commission, which is the European Union’s executive arm, formally put Microsoft on notice in mid-January, objecting to the bundling of the Internet Explorer browser with the Windows operating system. The Commission’s decision, which initially stemmed from a complaint filed by rival browser maker Opera, gave Microsoft two months to respond to the allegations, and also opened the case up to third-party involvement.

Microsoft’s share of the browser market has been declining steadily during the past year, largely due to Firefox’s growing popularity. In January, IE controlled 67.55 percent of global browser market share, a drop of more than 7 percentage points in a year, according to Web metrics company Net Applications. Meanwhile, Firefox gained more than 3 percentage points to 21.53 percent.

Twits Like Me is a simple app that won’t win any prizes for its design, but it skillfully finds other folks who share your same interests.

Finding friends on Twitter was simple when the service was in its infancy, but today, Twitter is home to millions of users. In fact, 70 percent of the entire Twitter community is composed of people who signed up in 2008 and 5,000 to 10,000 new users sign up each day.

Once you input your Twitter username into the service, Twits Like Me searches through Twitter to find others that the app believes you will find interesting. It works well and I found a slew of people I knew by using the service. The only issue is that there’s really no logic in how it finds those you may share interests with. As far as I can tell, it searched for people who tweeted about the same topics as I had in the last few days, but it didn’t analyze those tweets to determine which topics I talk about most often.

Although the same results are returned multiple times, it’s the first run-through that matters. If you want to find friends and colleagues quickly, Twubble offers a fine solution for doing just that.

That’s why I’ve compiled a list of some great solutions that have helped me find friends more efficiently than asking for their usernames.

By employing a wiki and allowing anyone to access it, TwitterPacks does a fine job of arranging Twitter users into groups based on their interests, location, company, or favorite topics.

If you want, Mr. Tweet will even auto-follow all the people it finds for you, but it requires you to hand over your username and password to the service to do it–a major security issue, if you ask me. Regardless, it works extremely well and returned a nice list of people worth following.

Maybe this is an obvious pick, but using Twitter search to find friends on Twitter actually works quite well. The feature allows users to search for a person by name and based on that information, it will return all the Twitter users who registered under that name.

TwitterLocal doesn’t analyze your Twitter profile like Twubble or Mr. Tweet, so the chances of finding a link between yourself and another person in your area are quite slim. But if you’re sure that some of your friends are on Twitter and you can’t find them through any other means, TwitterLocal will do a fine job of narrowing your search to your city. That said, you’ll be hard-pressed to find folks you know. I tried multiple ZIP codes trying to find someone and each time, I failed. But if you’re only looking to meet new people in your town, TwitterLocal is a great place to start.

Mr. Tweet is similar to Twubble in that it analyzes your Twitter account to find other people that it thinks you should follow. But what it provides that Twubble doesn’t is a host of stats with information about how you may know a particular person and how active they are on Twitter.

Twubble

TwitterLocal

Twubble is simple and requires little to help you find friends. Upon surfing to the site, you’re presented with a “Find some friends!” button, which when clicked, analyzes your Twitter account and finds people who you may want to follow. I was skeptical at first, but after clicking the button, the service returned a slew of colleagues and friends that I had no idea were on Twitter. I followed many of them and tried the button again. This time, it returned many of the same people and most of the users that I had already followed were displayed. Twubble realized that, though, and delivered a disclaimer saying it may not work as well the second time around if you follow many people.

If you want to find people in your area that may be using Twitter, TwitterLocal is a great service to do it. Upon entering a city and state or ZIP code, you can quickly find all the people within a 40-mile radius that have recently issued tweets.

Mr. Tweet

Twits Like Me

The main attraction to TwitterPacks (and probably its biggest issue) is that it relies on the community to provide value. For anyone to find people who share interests on Twitter, they first need to join the wiki and place their Twitter profile under one topic, interest, or company. If the millions of Twitter users actually used TwitterPacks, it would be an invaluable tool to find others that share your interests or live in the same area. But because it’s only used by a relatively small number of users, you’ll probably have a tough time finding people you know. If you want to make new friends, TwitterPacks will work just fine, though.

In essence, Twits Like Me works great if you and your friends tweet about the same topics, but if you talk about tech and the buddy you’re trying to find loves sports, you may have some trouble using this app.

Want to know where to find Don Reisinger on Twitter? Right here!

Overall, Twitter’s search tool is really fast, and will find the person you’re looking for without much digging. That said, it has one severe limitation: finding people with common names like John Smith will take some time, and it’s only useful when searching for a specific person.

If you haven’t tried Twubble out yet, it’s time you give it a spin.

I chose to follow them myself, though. I don’t need any help from Mr. Tweet.

TwitterPacks

Twitter search

In her 2006 book, “Tough Choices,” Fiorina detailed the inner workings of what she saw as an often-divided board of directors, calling some members’ behavior “amateurish and immature.”

Fiorina, 54, was the chairman and CEO of HP from 1999 to 2005, but was ousted after disagreements with the board of directors over how to execute the company’s strategy. During her tenure at HP, Fiorina resisted calls to break the Silicon Valley icon into two separate companies, with one focused on business customers and another focused on consumers. HP’s merger with Compaq Computer, which was spearheaded by Fiorina, has also been criticized.

“She’s doing great…she only just learned about this,” the paper quoted Deborah Bowker, her chief of staff, as saying in an e-mail. She said Fiorina’s prognosis for full recovering and that she is expected to resume “all of the activities to which she is enthusiastically committed.”

Fiorina, a Republican largely expected to run for a U.S. Senate seat for California, was diagnosed February 20, one day before addressing a state GOP convention in Sacramento, according to the report.

Since leaving HP, Fiorina has dabbled in politics, appearing on behalf of Sen. John McCain at the Republican National Convention during his unsuccessful bid for the presidency last year. Fiorina was also a member of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s transition team in 2003.

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina has been diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery Monday at Stanford Hospital, according to a report in The San Francisco Chronicle.

Carly Fiorina

Income from operations for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2008 includes incremental costs of $37 million and $73 million, respectively, for outside advisers related to Microsoft’s (”Microsoft”) proposals to acquire all or a part of the company, other strategic alternatives, including the Google agreement, the proxy contest, and related litigation defense costs.

While those various expenses have subsided, one continuing cost for Yahoo is defending itself against the number of shareholder lawsuits that were filed after it rejected Microsoft’s initial $31 a share bid and its sweetened $33 a share offer.

When Microsoft stepped away from the negotiating table, Yahoo faced another fight on its hands when shareholder activist Carl Icahn launched a proxy fight against the company to gain control of the board. Ultimately, the parties settled and Icahn and two representatives from his dissident directors slate in the Yahoo proxy fight were named to the Internet search pioneer’s board of directors.

According to the SEC filing, filed last week, here are the various components that make up the $73 million bill:

When Microsoft made its first offer in February, Yahoo’s stock was trading in the high $14 a share range. Today, the stock is trading in the low $11 a share range.

Meanwhile, more recently, the company’s search advertising deal with Google, which was discussed when Microsoft was still in the hunt for the Internet company, fell by the wayside this month after antitrust regulators said they would file a lawsuit to block the deal and Google opted to step back from the agreement.

Yahoo has no search advertising deal with Google, and ditto for its disappointment in luring Microsoft back to the table for an outright buyout of the entire company. But what it does have to show for its efforts is a $73 million bill to outside advisers, according to the company’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Internet search pioneer began accruing its bill back in February, when Microsoft launched its unsolicited buyout bid to acquire the entire company for $31 a share. That offer was later upped to $33 a share, but withdrawn in May after Yahoo countered with a $37 a share price and time had, in essence, lapsed to complete a deal before a change in presidents.

The company statement said the layoffs were a preventative measure: “These changes enable Current Media to reduce its cost structure, thereby assuring that it will be comfortably profitable in 2009, regardless (of) the depth and length of the recession.”

VC^2 production assistant Parisa Vahdatinia, her layoff packet labeled "Top Secret," and her (former) office plant were at the nearest bars, Pete’s Tavern, just hours after being laid off by media company CurrentTV.

The statement from Current hinted at this change as well. “These changes result from the development of a new, innovative programming strategy built around eight cross-platform channels, including news, comedy, music, and technology, slated to premiere in the first quarter of 2009,” the statement detailed. “Current’s new programming strategy expands upon its pioneering use of viewer-created content to include additional opportunities for participation, creating a far more viewer-influenced network, and further unifies the company’s online and TV platforms by having each Web channel paired with a companion TV show.”

“Not only was this uncalled for, but there was continuous deliberation during the last two or three months,” the former employee said. “Every meeting we’ve had with the VP of our department has been a lot of ‘Don’t worry, your positions are secure.’ And that has been repeated for the last two to three months.”

At least one Current employee, associate producer Andrew Schneider, has Twittered his departure. The company “just laid me off with a ton of my colleagues,” Schneider wrote.

(Credit:
James Martin/CNET Networks)

Schneider’s LinekdIn profile says that he worked in VC2, the “Viewer Created” or user-generated content division of Current. A source told CNET News that the VC2 division was hit particularly hard by the layoffs.

Last update at 8:02 p.m. PT. CNET News’ James Martin contributed to this article.

(Credit:
James Martin/CNET Networks)

Approached outside the company’s San Francisco headquarters, one laid-off Current employee said that she hadn’t seen it coming.

Changes in programming format are on the way too. Current’s focus on indie and amateur producers was a bold experiment, one that left some critics scratching their heads when the channel debuted in 2005.

The source also said additional layoffs would be coming in January, which a Current representative denied.

Producer/Editor Shaun Cvar and about a dozen other laid off CurrentTV employees gathered at a watering hole next door to Current's offices for drinks after being laid off.

Company representatives told CNET News last week that it had been a big success, and Gore himself later gave a speech at the Web 2.0 Summit in which he touched upon how he hopes Current will solve some of the problems plaguing the television news industry.

Current, which consists of the Current TV network and Current.com, had just gone through a high-profile marketing effort in conjunction with the 2008 presidential election, for which it partnered with trendy social-media brands Digg and Twitter.

A statement from Current put the number of layoffs at about 60 positions, with 30 more to be refilled, the company said in a statement. That’s less of a hard hit than the 20 percent cuts that a source close to Current hinted to CNET News on Tuesday. The statement read: “Approximately 60 positions have been eliminated in the company’s three U.S. offices, and approximately 30 new positions created,” the statement read. “Many of those whose positions were eliminated have been placed in the new positions. Current will have approximately 410 employees (after these staffing adjustments).”

Current had announced less than a day ago that it had partnered with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. to bring its network to Canada. Current’s plans for an initial public offering are on hold, employees have told CNET News. The company filed for an IPO in January.

Laid off producer/editor Holly Gibson, in pink, talks with co-workers outside their offices after the San Francisco media company laid off 60 people Tuesday.

“As part of the impending transition at Current TV, one source says the company is going to drop its shorter (user-generated content) videos in favor of the more traditional 30-minute programs that have long dominated television programming across all channels,” David Weir, an analyst at CNET News sister site BNET, reported on Monday night.

There have been layoffs at Current Media, the cable network co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.

(Credit:
James Martin/CNET Networks)

(Credit: CC David Ortez)

One follower, allemm, expressed his feelings very clearly: “Nice ride. I bet it was one of them Colombians.” I’m not entirely sure which Colombians he had in mind, but perhaps he was referring to certain dealers of questionable substances.

But a fair smattering of followers appear to be using this difficult event to deliver a spanking to the U.S. Postal Service, which seems to have stopped sponsoring Mr. Armstrong’s team in 2004.

However, one of the beauties of Twitter is that you can cast a peek on who someone’s followers really are. So might I bring to you a couple of the replies, just to give you a flavor?

Follower janusinfinity offered this bulletin: “That’s a crazy-looking bike! I couldn’t miss that for anything. That freakin’ sucks. So how does someone contact Lance, if they see it? Sacramento sucks.” Some might find this a little harsh on Sacramento, where politicians are desperately looking for money rather than bikes.

Lance Armstrong seems like a man with an abundance of life’s gifts. Women, calves, Tour de France victories.

Just wondering.

As you can see, Mr. Armstrong's bike is missing.

However, someone who chooses to “live weak” snuck into his team’s truck in Sacramento, Calif., and pilfered Mr. Armstrong’s time trial bike. I am assuming that one of his entourage may have informed the police of the heinous event.

Then he posted a Twitpic of his missing article. He explained that it was the only bike of its kind in the world and therefore hard to pawn off. He even offered a reward.

Mr. Armstrong himself, however, turned to the one force he can trust. Yes, his 112,000 Twitter followers. With a huge great heave of emotion coursing through his every vein, he penned: “Someone stole my time trial bike! Wtf!? APB out to the twitterati.”

A man, they say, is known by the quality of his friends. What is the likelihood that one of the twitterati will provide valuable information that results in the return of this unique bike? And what is the likelihood that one of them might have actually stolen it?

A follower called tribaby suggested: “The Postal Service took it, and they lost it like they did my racing bike. Hopefully someone, somewhere brags about it, and it comes home to you!! Mine never did.”