Yahoo to terminate "Yahoo Plus" Web package Yahoo! NEWS
Internet company Yahoo Inc. will terminate a bundled offering of special Web services next month based on consumer response to the package, though the individual features will still be available, the company said on Tuesday. Yahoo Plus" aggregated features such as extra e-mail storage, protection against unwanted spam e-mail, an online game creation service and streaming music in one package. The cost of the package was $3.95 per month with an annual subscription or $4.95 per month without an annual commitment. "When we listened to our users it became clear that Yahoo Plus was not an essential service," a Yahoo spokeswoman said. "It is just this one amalgamation of premium services (to be canceled); we still offer the individual premium services." Yahoo notified Yahoo Plus subscribers that the service will terminate on April 22.

Verizon online directory in ad deal with Google Yahoo! NEWS
Verizon Communications Inc.'s online directory SuperPages.com on Tuesday said it has linked up with Google to provide search advertising services to its millions of listed businesses. SuperPages will offer its advertisers the ability to bid for Google search terms where appropriate for their business in a resale agreement that could open up a whole new avenue for local advertisers seeking potential customers online. "We don't have as much traffic as Google so this gives our advertisers a much broader reach and gives Google access to small businesses in their localities," SuperPages spokeswoman Dana Benton Russell said. SuperPages is part of the Verizon Information Services division, a $3.5 billion business that provides yellow pages and shopping information in print form, on the Internet and via wireless carriers. SuperPages alone has about 16 million businesses listed, the company said. In December, Verizon said it would consider selling or spinning off its directories unit. Analysts estimate the division could fetch as much as $17 billion and would invite interest from Google and rival search engine Yahoo Inc.. Local search is viewed as one of the most promising growth areas for Web search companies, which earn the lion's share of their revenue from search listings targeted more specifically to individual users. Google officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Wall Street's Optimism Subsides

By Jerry Knight

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke delivered the interest rate increase everyone was waiting for today.

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle

Fed ups US interest rate to 4.75% BBC NEWS
The Federal Reserve has raised US interest rates again, by a quarter of a percentage point to 4.75%. The widely expected rise came at the end of the first interest rate meeting held by new Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. Rates have increased from 1% over the past 20 months and are now at their highest level since April 2001. The Fed said economic growth had "rebounded strongly", but left the door open for further rate increases as it tries to contain the risk of inflation.

Market reaction
Most market watchers now expect the Fed to raise interest rates at least once more over the coming months, to 5%. "I think they're probably going to do one more at the next meeting for another quarter percent because they think that inflationary figures are still running a little higher than they would like," said Bob Moulton, president of American Mortgage Group. "I think one more Fed increase and then we should be done." The Fed's suggestion that further rate rises were on the cards sent equity markets falling after the gains seen earlier in the day. The Dow Jones index of leading shares slumped by 96 points to close at 11,154. The dollar rose against most other currencies on the prospect of higher borrowing costs, which tend to enhance its attractiveness to investors.

Ranbaxy buys Romania firm Terapia BBC NEWS
Ranbaxy, India's largest drugs company, has bought Romanian pharmaceutical business Terapia for $324m. Both firms specialise in producing generic drugs and Ranbaxy said the move was key to its European expansion plan. "The transaction is compelling and furthers us on our path to becoming a top five global generic company," said Ranbaxy boss Malvinder Singh. Ranbaxy enjoyed sales of $1.2bn last year. Terapia's products are on sale in 15 eastern European countries.

Fast-growing market
The Indian firm now has a 97.5% stake in Terapia. Ranbaxy said Romania was the fastest growing drug market in the central and eastern Europe region, expanding at 34% annually. It added that Romania's future membership of the European Union would create further room for expansion. Ranbaxy employs people in 46 countries and has its products on sale in 125.

Most ER Patients Are Insured, Study Says

Challenging a common notion that uninsured patients are clogging
hospital emergency rooms, a new study has found that the vast
majority of adults who turn up there frequently have health
insurance and regular doctors. By Daniel Yi.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ez3...Io30G2B0HPSO0ER

New Chief Keeps Fed on Path of Tightening

WASHINGTON-The chairman was new, but the result was the same: The
Federal Reserve nudged its benchmark short-term interest rate up a
quarter of a percentage point and suggested that at least one more
rate increase was coming. By Joel Havemann.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ez3...Io30G2B0HPSP0ES

Web Software Firm Enters New Outsourcing Frontier

SAN DIEGO-Silicon Space, which once sent work to Asia, now uses a
Mexican company and hires commuters from Tijuana. By Evelyn
Iritani.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ez3...Io30G2B0HPSQ0ET

Economists Predict State Slowdown

A slowdown in the California economy will begin late this year and
continue for the next two years as a cooling housing market leads
to job losses in construction and related industries, according to
the latest UCLA Anderson Forecast. By Annette Haddad.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ez3...Io30G2B0HPSR0EU

CEO's Pay Rises as Gap Struggles

Paul Pressler is awarded stock options worth $15.2 million despite
missing key targets. By Leslie Earnest.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ez3...Io30G2B0HPSS0EV

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/con...0327_215976.htm

MARCH 28, 2006

Technology
By Steve Rosenbush


Facebook's on the Block
The owners of the privately held social-networking site hope to fetch as much as $2 billion. And media giants like Viacom may make a good match

Facebook, the Web site where students around the world socialize and swap information, has put itself on the block, BusinessWeek Online has learned. The owners of the privately held company have turned down a $750 million offer and hope to fetch as much as $2 billion in a sale, senior industry executives familiar with the matter say. Advertisement

That may sound like a huge amount of money, especially when you consider that the company was launched just two years ago by a group of sophomores at Harvard University, led by Mark Zuckerberg (see BW Online, "Under 30, On the Cutting Edge"). But already, www.facebook.com has become the seventh-most heavily trafficked site on the Internet, according to market researcher comScore Media Metrix. It racked up 5.5 billion page views during the month of February, the latest month for which complete data are available. That's more page views than the Web sites of Amazon.com (AMZN), Ask.com, or Walt Disney (DIS).

GOOD FIT. It's not clear who would be willing or able to pay that much. Industry analysts think that Facebook might be a good match for Viacom (VIA), which owns the MTV, VH1, and Comedy Central cable networks. "I think Facebook would be a great strategic fit for Viacom," says Troy Young, executive vice-president and chief experience architect at Organic, an online advertising and consulting firm. "Viacom has people working on social networking. But I think they need to demonstrate to the market, through a major acquisition, that they are on top of the youth marketplace," Young said. Viacom declined comment. Facebook executives weren't immediately available for comment.

A Facebook deal would help Viacom founder and Executive Chairman Sumner Redstone fend off a growing challenge from News Corp. (NWS). The media conglomerate run by Rupert Murdoch has poured enormous resources into the Internet during the last year. It acquired social-networking pioneer MySpace.com last year for $580 million (see BW Online, 11/15/05, "Users Crowd into MySpace").

MySpace has continued to grow since the acquisition. It had 37.3 million unique visitors during the month of February, according to comScore. It logged 23.5 billion page views, making it the second-most trafficked site after Yahoo, which had 30 billion. MSN (MSFT) was No. 3, with 18 billion, and Google (GOOG) was No. 6, with 7.7 billion. News Corp. also acquired gaming and men's lifestyle site ign.com for $650 million (see BW Online, 08/22/05, "IGN Entertainment: Where the Boys Are").

ATTRACTIVE TO MARKETERS. Sites like MySpace and Facebook, and social-networking rivals such as the video-oriented YouTube are promising new channels for communication, entertainment, and marketing. Social-networking sites are a primary form of communication for millions of younger people in the U.S, and increasingly, around the world. It's not unusual for young people to spend an hour or more a day at such sites, posting photos, messages, and blog entries, and building up huge lists of online "friends." While advertising rates on such sites are low, marketers of music and consumer goods have flocked to MySpace and its rivals.

Facebook doesn't match the scale of MySpace, but Organic's Young says it presents a great opportunity for marketers. The site admits college and high school students, though it's more popular on a college level, and the atmosphere is more controlled than the free-wheeling MySpace.

In recent months, parents, politicians, and police have become concerned that criminals could be taking advantage of MySpace (see BW Online, 03/06/06, "Making MySpace Safe for Kids"). On Mar. 21, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal called on the company to take steps to protect minors from potential harm. MySpace says that it shares the concerns about safety and security on the site and is working with the attorney general to bolster its safety practices and procedures.

WAY BEYOND CAMBRIDGE. Zuckerberg founded his company, originally known as The Facebook, as a way for classmates at Harvard to communicate. It was named after the books that colleges typically provide students, listing profiles and pictures of classmates. He asked friend Eduardo Saverin to help fund the site. Classmates Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz joined as co-founders. The site was an instant hit at Harvard, and it quickly took hold at other schools, such as Stanford University. Since then, it has spread across the U.S. and other parts of the world.

Just a few months ago, people scoffed at the hundreds of millions that Murdoch spent on News Corp.'s Net acquisitions. But those prices are likely to be surpassed in the near future, as M&A activity in the social-networking sector heats up.


Rosenbush is a senior writer for BusinessWeek Online, based in New York

Copyright 2000- 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.
All rights reserved.

March 29, 2006
Fed Panel Raises Rate to 4.75%
By EDUARDO PORTER
WASHINGTON, March 28 — At Ben S. Bernanke's first meeting as head of the Federal Reserve's policy-making committee, the watchword was no surprises.

As expected, the Federal Open Market Committee raised the benchmark federal funds rate on Tuesday by a quarter of a percentage point, to 4.75 percent, and suggested that at least one more increase was in the cards. It was the 15th such increase in consecutive meetings of the committee.

In its statement describing the decision, the central bank veered little from the Fed's prior assessments of the economy and the expected path of monetary policy, underscoring Mr. Bernanke's stated intention to maintain the course set by his predecessor as Fed chairman, Alan Greenspan.

Despite its predictability, the Fed's statement still modestly unsettled financial markets, bolstering the dollar in foreign exchange markets and sending the prices of stocks and government bonds lower. The broad Standard & Poor's 500-stock index fell 0.64 percent, to 1,293.23. [Page C9.]

Though virtually all investors expected the rate increase, a substantial minority of operators on Wall Street had held hopes that the Fed would indicate that it would be the last one in the cycle that began in June 2004, when the benchmark rate stood at 1 percent. They were disappointed by the clear suggestion that the Fed still saw the need for further tightening.

"He was paving the way for another rate hike," said Mickey D. Levy, chief economist at Bank of America. "He knew full well that with this type of language the market would price in a hike to a 5 percent funds rate."

The Fed's statement relied on words nearly identical to those used after the committee's previous meeting in January, Mr. Greenspan's last after 18 years as head of the central bank. It said that "some further policy firming may be needed" to keep inflation under wraps.

It pointed out that the economy was growing robustly after a slowdown in the fourth quarter of last year. It noted that core inflation, beyond food and energy, had ticked up only modestly, but it warned that the rising prices of energy and other commodities could add to inflation pressures in the future.

Though the committee's statement was pored over by financial analysts for any hint of the new chairman's intentions, the market tremors appeared to have little to do with the new management at the Fed.

Mr. Bernanke is expected to put his own stamp on the central bank eventually. He has long said that he supports more transparency, letting the markets know more clearly how the Fed reaches its decisions and what is the expected path of policy. He has argued in favor of setting a specific inflation target — within a range — to make explicit the Fed's goals.

He apparently judged Tuesday not to be the day for bold moves, however. Untested as Fed chairman, Mr. Bernanke had a clear interest in projecting continuity with the Greenspan Fed.

At most, the new statement provided a mere hint of Mr. Bernanke's desired transparency. "It was the same policy message but with a little innovation in communication," said Laurence H. Meyer, a former Fed governor who is now an economic forecaster at Macroeconomic Advisers in Washington.

The whiff of change came in the second paragraph of the Fed's five-paragraph statement, the passage often referred to as the "snapshot paragraph," in which the committee assesses current economic conditions. It offered a somewhat more detailed analysis of current conditions than the one issued in January.

Significantly, it calmed fears that wage increases might spur inflation by pointing out that productivity gains were holding down the growth in labor costs.

At the same time, the Fed went beyond the expected description of the economy's current status to elucidate what it saw as its likely future path. "Economic growth has rebounded strongly in the current quarter," it said, adding that growth appeared "likely to moderate to a more sustainable pace."

Mr. Bernanke comes to the helm of the nation's central bank at a delicate moment for monetary policy. Since the Fed started increasing interest rates, financial markets have come to expect a quarter-point rise in interest rates at pretty much every committee meeting.

But after 15 consecutive rate increases, the cycle of monetary tightening is reaching its peak as interest rates approach what is seen as a "neutral" rate that is not so high that it slows economic growth but not so low that it allows inflationary fears to come back to life.

With underlying inflation at 1.8 percent, excluding food and energy, the Fed's preferred measure is still within the range of 1 percent to 2 percent considered comfortable by most officials. That leaves the Fed debating how far to raise rates merely to counter the risk of higher inflation as opposed to the reality of prices rising too fast.

In a note to investors, a Goldman Sachs economist, Andrew Tilton, said that "the potential for disagreement on policy decisions increases now that the Fed is roughly at 'neutral' and the data become more important."

With the economy growing at a healthy clip but facing the potential headwind of a weakening housing market, the decision on when to end the cycle of rising interest rates will not be trivial.

The outlook for inflation is slightly worse than in January, with increases in producer prices and consumer price inflation. Payrolls have expanded by some 200,000 a month and retail sales have grown sharply.

Fed economists have argued that a slowing housing market is likely to dampen overall economic growth. Housing, however, is not sinking yet. Sales of existing homes rose in February, housing starts remain strong and by some measures home prices are still rising.

In testimony to Congress last month, Mr. Bernanke argued that in coming quarters the Fed's policy-setting committee "will have to make ongoing, provisional judgments about the risks to both inflation and growth, and monetary policy action will be increasingly dependent on incoming data."

Given such uncertainties, mused Ethan S. Harris, chief economist of Lehman Brothers, "Bernanke moved into the job right at the time it got interesting."



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Amazon's Digital Music Launch Expected By End of 2006 Forbes
Citing recent media reports, Merrill Lynch analyst Justin Post said he expects Amazon.com to roll out digital distribution of music, and perhaps also movies, by the end of the year 2006. A digital music service seems to be the company's "most pressing need," wrote the research analyst in a report Wednesday. Amazon's launch of digital music distribution services "is a when, not if, proposition," said Post, citing the company's substantial increase in research and development spending and "ongoing pressure" in music sales offline. Amazon has a large active customer base and profiles, said the analyst, which are "the company’s best assets to launch a compelling service" that can compete with the likes of Apple Computer iTunes, NetFlix, Yahoo! and Amazon's current partner, Audible. "Initially services could be offered in conjunction with physical purchases, which is consistent with Amazon’s current business model/strategy," said the analyst. "Longer-term, Amazon consumers could increasingly become subscribers, creating a more defensible competitive moat." Even so, any incremental financial impact from a 2006 launch is expected to be minimal compared to the company's $10 billion in sales. Longer-term, "a successful subscription offering could help increase Amazon’s total gross margins, while a download model could compress margins," he added. The analyst maintained a "neutral" rating on Amazon shares. Possibly keeping Amazon stock range-bound in the future is increasing digital media competition from Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft MSN and Time Warner AOL.
Kate DuBose Tomassi

EBay Court Decision Could Have Long-Term Impact Forbes
Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck maintained a "peer perform" rating on eBay amid today's Supreme Court hearing on the company's patent dispute with MercExchange. The e-commerce giant will present its argument against a permanent injunction of its "Buy It Now" function, which technology firm MercExchange claimed violated a patent it holds. A federal appeals court has already ruled in favor of a permanent injunction and awarded MercExchange $25 million in damages in 2003. MercExchange is now also seeking damages that translate into 0.75% of the gross merchandise value that eBay generated from the "Buy It Now" business. "We believe the decision of the Court will be important to watch for as fixed-price trading now represents 30% of eBay’s business," wrote the Bear Stearns analyst in a research report today. "A potential precedent created by a decision could be broadly felt for years." In its 2005 10K, eBay stated that it had "modified certain functionality of our websites and business practices in a manner which we believe would avoid any further infringement." "We think eBay may have revised its processes enough to minimize its liability," said Peck. "However, at minimum, eBay would be liable for the original $25 million."
Maya Roney

aQuantive Facing Renewed Competition Forbes
RBC Capital Markets analyst Jordan Rohan initiated coverage on Internet advertising company aQuantive with a "sector perform" rating and $24 price target in anticipation of intensifying competition from rival DoubleClick in 2006. "The macro thesis that underlies an investment in aQuantive is very clear -- demand for online advertising continues to be very robust, and aQuantive is well positioned to help the largest online advertisers in the U.S. take advantage of every available option," wrote the analyst in a report Wednesday. "However, there are some developing risks to the aQuantive story, mostly on the technology side." Rohan believes 2005 was an "exceptional" year for aQuantives's Atlas ad serving platform as its biggest competitor, DoubleClick, went through a transition as it was taken private. However, Atlas could be facing renewed competition from DoubleClick, the analyst said. "We believe that after a year of lost momentum, DoubleClick has re-emerged as a competitor in the technology segment, and has dropped pricing aggressively to gain market share." Rohan has noted recently that the media buying divisions of some large traditional agencies that historically have licensed aQuantive's Atlas ad serving platform are in the process of shifting their technology to other vendors. Moreover, the RBC analyst believes DoubleClick's technology compares favorably to Atlas along many dimensions. "From a momentum perspective, it will be more difficult for aQuantive to beat and raise estimates this year than it was in 2005," said Rohan. "The company is now facing some real, apples-to-apples comparisons."
Maya Roney

Google Continues To Take Share From Yahoo!, MSN Forbes
Google continued to gain search market share in February at the expense of Yahoo! and Microsoft unit MSN, according to a Merrill Lynch report. Merrill analysts Justin Post and Lauren Rich Fine said February comScore data indicated that total U.S. search query volume increased 11% year-over-year and 6% versus January data. Google led the February share gains, capturing 42.3% of U.S. share, up from 41.4% in January 2006 and 36.3% in January 2005. "We expect Google’s increased market share in search queries, and better monetization of queries to lead to increased share of ad dollars relative to its competitors in first half 2006," said Post and Fine. "Furthermore, we believe the company’s clear strategic focus on Search will continue to provide a competitive advantage for the company over the next several months as leading competitors struggle to overhaul/improve their search platforms." IAC/InterActiveCorp's Ask.com also gained share in February to 6%, after slipping to 5.6% in January. "We are encouraged by the recent share gains at Ask.com and are optimistic that rebranding initiatives and marketing investment will result in further share gains in March," said the Merrill analysts. Yahoo! saw its market share decline to 27.6% in February from 28.7% in the previous month and 31.1% last year. Microsoft's MSN had 13.5% market share in February, down slightly from 13.7% in the previous month and 16.3% a year ago. Both companies have steadily lost market share over the last year.
Maya Roney

TV downloads break new barrier with "Scrubs" deal Yahoo! NEWS
In another first for the fledgling world of "on-demand" television, NBC and the sister studio of rival network ABC have teamed up to make a prime-time show of shared interest, "Scrubs," available for Internet downloads. The NBC hospital comedy, produced by Disney-ABC Television Group's Touchstone Television, has been added to the catalog of shows that can be purchased as a download from Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes music store for $1.99 per episode. While TV series for network broadcast are routinely produced by and licensed from studios of competing media companies, the "Scrubs" deal marks the first such partnership for a prime-time program offered via the Internet for commercial download, NBC and ABC said on Wednesday. Until now, programs made available for online purchase, like ABC's "Desperate Housewives" and NBC's "The Office," have all been productions of their respective "in-house" television studios. The iTunes inventory of network shows has grown to more than 60 programs since Apple struck a first landmark deal with ABC in October 2005 to provide commercial-free downloads of some of the Disney-owned network's biggest hits for $1.99. The advent of downloadable TV launched a new revenue stream for broadcasters and a new era of digital portability for consumers, enabling them to play some of their favorite shows anywhere, any time, on video-equipped models of Apple's wildly popular iPod device. However, the selection of shows that networks were ready to offer for downloads was limited by questions over how they would share revenues on programs produced by third-party TV studios -- a quandary resolved by the "Scrubs" deal. Neither Disney nor NBC, controlled by General Electric Co., provided financial terms of their arrangement. But entertainment trade paper Daily Variety reported earlier this month that the two companies were close to a deal that would provide for a 50-50 split of all profits generated by iTunes sales of "Scrubs." Current-season episodes of the series, starring Zach Braff as a young doctor struggling through his hospital residency, will be available from the NBC "storefront" on iTunes. Some shows available for video "streaming" on various Web sites, as opposed to downloads, already have come with mixed corporate pedigrees, including the NBC new crime drama "Heist," which is produced in part by Sony Corp.'s Sony Pictures Television.
By Steve Gorman

Google Wants $2 Billion More Forbes
There are times when $8 billion isn't enough. For Google Chief Executive Eric Schimdt, that time is now. The Internet search giant company intends to raise $2 billion in cash through the sale of 5.3 million shares, according to a document filed late Wednesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Google says it will use the money to fund working capital, expenditures and possible acquisitions of businesses, assets or technologies. This will be the second stock offering in less than a year for the Mountain View, Calif.-based company. Google previously raised $4.3 billion in September to fund future growth. Since then, Google extended a pact with Time Warner's AOL that included a $1 billion ownership stake, bought dMarc Broadcasting, and started a finance hub. As of the start of February, Google had $8 billion in its bank account. The sale comes with Google's stock down 5% this year, and 16% off an all-time high of $471 hit in early January.
Chris Kraeuter

Customer Service Hell Forbes
In the modern world, it's an experience no one can escape. Everyone recognizes that firm female voice on the other end of the line, melodically repeating, "Your call is important to us." As companies cut costs and shift their call centers overseas, service has become less personal--and more frustrating. There's a solution to this problem: e-mail. Companies save money by answering queries over the Internet. And customers don't have to waste time waiting on hold. But there's a problem: E-mail help doesn't work well, and it's only getting worse. It takes firms longer to respond to e-mail queries than it did two years ago, according to Jupiter Research. In a recent study, the firm found that 25% of companies responded to e-mail questions within 24 hours, down from 27% two years ago. Meanwhile, more companies are taking more than three days to answer customer concerns. When consulting firm Marketspace Advisory tested 30 companies with e-mail queries, fewer than half even answered the questions. Moreover, for those who did bother to reply, the answers were often confusing and offered no method of pursuing inquiries. "We saw a lot of small things that would be pretty easy to implement, but companies hadn't made the effort," says Dorsey McGlone, a consultant with Marketspace Advisory. She says companies often used incomprehensible subject lines and gave customers no way to follow up. Bad service has consequences. When customers' questions aren't answered over e-mail, they're likely to pick up the phone--costing the company more money. Most consumers also tell friends about negative experiences and don't patronize the offending company again. The problem will only increase as more commerce moves online. The volume of e-mail queries will rise 18% per year through 2010, says Zachary McGeary, an analyst at Jupiter Research. "Companies are challenged by that, and they're not responding by investing in appropriate technology." Companies that do invest in e-mail servicing typically save money and win customers. Hewlett-Packard tries to respond to every e-mail query within an hour, and usually answers within ten minutes, according to Mark Notarainni, who runs HP's customer contact centers in the Americas. The firm monitors its e-mail centers on a minute-by-minute basis, so it can respond immediately if service slips. Because of its successful e-mail service centers, HP is answering fewer phone calls. Call center volume decreased 25% between 2004 and 2005, while e-mail volume rose. That goes right to the bottom line, since one e-mail response costs 60% less than a phone call. There are a few keys to a good e-mail response. First, companies should send an automated reply that tells customers when a more complete answer will arrive, McGeary says. Ideally, a more detailed response should arrive within 24 hours. The subject line should always include the company's name. E-mails with incomprehensible subject lines confuse customers and sometimes get filtered into junk mail folders. The message should also be easy to scan for relevant information. And it must give customers an easy way to respond with followup questions. In a study conducted last year by Forrester Research, hotel chain Marriott International won points for clearly describing how to resolve the customer's problem. The firm stumbled, however, with its subject line, which read: "RE: [T2004112901ACS010Z2069411]." But at least Marriott made an effort. When Forrester e-mailed Chase a question about mortgages, the bank sent back an e-mail with a toll-free phone number. Tom Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, says customers usually ask mortgage questions in person. "What we try to do is have someone talk to a mortgage rep. Getting a mortgage is not an e-mail kind of question."
See some of the best e-mail customer service providers

• Wal-Mart Stores
  Wal-Mart beat Target, J.C. Penny and Sears in a Forrester Research study of 16 firms. It was the only retailer that gave customers an easy way to respond with further questions. J.C. Penney tied with Caesars Entertainment for the worst performance in the study.
• Grainger
  Grainger, a privately held industrial-supply firm, won top honors in Marketspace Advisor's study. Researchers asked the company for a phone number, which they could call to find out the exact quantity available of a product that had been listed as "in limited supply" on the Grainger Web site. The company sent an automatic response telling customers when to expect a more complete answer. A day later, when the response arrived, it included the phone number and answered the question directly ("17 available for shipment"). And a bonus: The company's phone reps also earned high marks.
• Northwest Airlines
  In Forrester's study, Northwest was the highest-scoring airline, beating American, United and Delta. The firm answered the question in only one e-mail and used easy-to-understand language. But it didn't give consumers any way to respond with a follow-up question.
• Wells Fargo
  In Forrester's study, Wells Fargo won points for replying within 24 hours, clearly answering the question and providing privacy information. But it didn't give customers an easy way to respond with follow-up questions.
• Hewlett-Packard
  Hewlett-Packard, which generally responds to e-mail queries within ten minutes, beat about 30 other firms in Marketspace Advisor's study of customer service. The computer firm answered researchers' questions and even provided extra information.
• Marriott International
  Marriott won points in Forrester's study by referencing the customer's question in the second sentence of its reply. Then it clearly laid out the next steps. The firm's score fell, though, because of its incomprehensible subject line.

See some of the worst e-mail customer service providers

• Caesars Entertainment This Harrah's Entertainment unit failed to make privacy information easy to find in its reply. The hotel operator, which tied with J.C. Penney for the lowest score in Forrester's study, didn't answer the question and took more than two days to reply. It did win points for using easy-to-understand language. David Strow, a Harrah's spokesman, says his firm didn't acquire Caesars until mid-2005, after the survey was conducted, adding, "There's always room to improve; we take customer service very seriously."
• J.C. Penney Holding
  Tied with Caesars Entertainment for the lowest score in Forrester's survey, the retailer didn't adequately answer the question Forrester posed. The response was written in hard-to-understand language, Forrester said, and had an incomprehensible subject line. Tim Lyons, a J.C. Penney spokesman, said his firm discussed the results with Forrester when the study came out and has made several changes, including improving its subject lines and adding a link to privacy information in its replies. While Forrester said the retailer made it difficult for customers to respond, Lyons says customers have always been able to follow up by clicking on "reply."
• United Airlines
  The carrier used easy-to-understand language in its reply, but that's about all it did right. Researchers asked how children traveling alone could meet their grandparents at the gate, but United didn't answer the question. Its reply also took more than two days to arrive and had an incomprehensible subject line. "Our customers contact us through several channels including phone, fax, postal mail, e-mail, at the airport and in-flight," says Robin Urbanski, a United spokeswoman. "Making sure we exceed our customers' expectations in each of these areas is very important to us."
• Chase Home Finance
  When researchers at Forrester sent this JPMorgan Chase unit an e-mail asking about loan preapproval, the bank didn't even try to answer the question. Instead, its reply included a toll-free phone number. Tom Kelly, a JPMorgan Chase spokesman, says customers usually ask mortgage questions in person. "What we try to do is have someone talk to a mortgage rep," Kelly says. "Getting a mortgage is not an e-mail kind of question."
• Bank One and Chase
  Both now owned by JPMorgan Chase, they scored the lowest in Forrester's survey of financial institutions. Researchers asked Bank One for a credit card recommendation and Chase for a checking account recommendation. But JPMorgan Chase spokesman Tom Kelly says those questions are usually answered in person. E-mail queries are a very small part of the company's customer service, he says. Despite its overall negative score, Chase won points for setting customer expectations: After submitting an inquiry, the user was immediately told to expect a response within 24 hours. In fact, the response came in half that time. Bank One's Web site was recently folded into Chase.com.

By Hannah Clark

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HC31Df03.html
Move over Bangalore
By Nayantara

BANGALORE - Several prestigious high-tech projects have gone Hyderabad's way in recent months, prompting speculation that Bangalore's days as India's leading IT city might be numbered. But while Hyderabad may be gaining ground, it still has much catching up to do. Bangalore, which enjoys the advantage of a solid headstart, is still way ahead in the race.

In February, Hyderabad pipped Bangalore at the post to grab chip-maker AMD and SemIndia's prestigious Fab City project. The two cities as well as another southern Indian city, Chennai, were vying for the US$3 billion project, which will host India's first major silicon chip manufacturing facility. The significance of the Fab (factory fabrication model) City project can be gauged from the fact that while total foreign direct investment flow into India in 2004-05 was $3.75 billion and is expected to rise to $7 billion this year, the Fab City project alone is worth $3 billion.

The project is expected to act as the catalyst that puts India on the global chip manufacturing map. It has the potential of creating tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of jobs when fully operational. That Hyderabad was chosen over IT frontrunner Bangalore for such a high profile project came as a shock and was a huge slap in the latter's face.

Even as Bangalore was licking its wounds, it suffered another setback. Hyderabad became the only city in India besides New Delhi visited by President George W. Bush during his three-day trip to India in early March. Tens of thousands might have protested Bush's foreign policies in Hyderabad, but the IT industry saw the presidential presence as a huge vote of confidence in the city. Hyderabad became the only city in India other than New Delhi to host two American presidents – Bill Clinton stopped by in March 2000.

Hyderabad's IT industry is hoping that the Bush visit will trigger another wave of investment, as happened following the Clinton visit six years ago, which apparently had the long-term effect of improving Hyderabad's ratings as a destination for IT investment. Adding icing to the cake, Bush announced the opening of an American consulate in Hyderabad, the fifth in India. Bangalore was apparently considered, but Hyderabad clinched the deal.

Hyderabad is India's fifth largest city and ranks second in the hierarchy of IT hubs in the country. Aggressive promotion and massive development of digital infrastructure along with the setting up of numerous IT campuses in and around the city has resulted in the transformation of Hyderabad to Cyberabad. Oracle, Dell, Infosys, Microsoft, Wipro, GE, iGate, IBM, Satyam, Tata Consultancy Services, Amazon and Google have all established centers in the city.

Energetic engagment with the IT industry and an active role in improving the city's infrastructure have all worked to make Hyderabad attractive to investors. This is in sharp contrast with Bangalore, where sections in the Karnataka government are not just indifferent to IT but actually hostile to it. Bangalore’s infrastructure is crumbling and political instability has denied the city's civic administration direction. Hyderabad scores over Bangalore with regard to government responsiveness, investment friendliness and infrastructure. The Andhra Pradesh government goes all out to woo investors.

It is this aggressive courting that helped Hyderabad clinch the Fab City deal. India's IT and Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran said that while Chennai showed "lukewarm" interest in the project, Karnataka pressed hard and was a stiff competitor. But Andhra Pradesh went a step further by providing subsidies and infrastructure facilities such as water and electricity. The state government has also allotted 1,200 acres of land near Shamshabad, where Hyderabad's international airport is being built.

Hyderabad is giving Bangalore competition on other fronts too. Hyderabad's performance in IT exports is growing at a faster rate than Bangalore's. In 2004-05 the city's IT exports grew 64.5% over 2003-04, Bangalore's growth rate in 2004-05 was a mere 10%. In the current fiscal year Bangalore has registered a 30% growth in exports till December 2005, while Hyderabad has registered 61% for the same period - the highest in the country.

But Bangalore doesn't seem bothered yet. Hyderabad's export growth rate might be exceptional, but in real terms, Bangalore's software exports are still over double those of Hyderabad. "And Bangalore has managed to retain the top position in the country's software exports, despite the infrastructure hassles," says B V Naidu, director of Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), Bangalore.

Software exports from Karnataka are poised to cross the $8.5 billion mark in 2005-06, he says. Karnataka accounts for 34% of the country's total software exports, which stand at $23 billion so far this year, he adds. Naidu says India's software exports are expected to cross the $60 billion mark by 2010, and exports from Karnataka are expected to cross the $20 billion mark by then.

Bangalore does not seem overly worried about the challenge from Hyderabad. It believes that the enormous head start it had in the IT race is enough to keep it in front of the upstarts. Even Hyderabad admits that Bangalore is way ahead. Hyderabad is about where Bangalore was in the early-to-mid 1990s, says A K Menon, the CEO of Options, an executive recruitment company in Hyderabad. "Hyderabad is projecting itself as another Bangalore in the years to come," he says - a point Bangalore needs to take note of.

As of now, Bangalore remains the favorite destination for investment not just in IT but in biotech as well. According to Karnataka government officials, during the first four months of the current fiscal year, 64 new firms opened offices in Bangalore, including 43 with foreign equity, which is roughly about four new companies registering every week. Out of the total of 1,584 IT companies operating from Bangalore, 512 were multinationals, 66 of them Global Fortune 500 companies. (By comparison Hyderabad has 127 foreign equity units although this is expected to increase to 170 this year.)

Besides, analysts believe that Bangalore's security environment - the terrorist attack at the Indian Institute of Science in December 2005, notwithstanding - is far better than that in Hyderabad. The threat posed by Islamist militants and left-wing insurgents in Hyderabad is far greater than in Bangalore. Hyderabad has witnessed several terrorist attacks over the past decade, including a suicide bombing last year. It is also very susceptible to communal violence. But Hyderabadis discount the danger. The Americans would not have chosen Hyderabad for their consulate if it was that unsafe, they point out.

The IT industry in Bangalore is more concerned about meeting the shortfall in manpower to support software and allied activities in Karnataka. Of the 900,000 IT professionals in India, a third work in Karnataka. "India will require 2.5 million qualified professionals, and Karnataka alone will require one million," Naidu says, pointing out that by 2010 there will be a shortfall of at least half a million. The available manpower is not considered up to the mark. "Only 50% of the professionals in India are considered to be usable by the IT industry," he says.

Bangalore might leave the job of drawing in investment to the magic of "Brand Bangalore". Hyderabad doesn't have the luxury - yet - of resting on its laurels. It has to try harder.

(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .)

March 31, 2006
Shocks Seen in New Math for Pensions
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
The board that writes accounting rules for American business is proposing a new method of reporting pension obligations that is likely to show that many companies have a lot more debt than was obvious before.

In some cases, particularly at old industrial companies like automakers, the newly disclosed obligations are likely to be so large that they will wipe out the net worth of the company.

The panel, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, said the new method, which it plans to issue today for public comment, would address a widespread complaint about the current pension accounting method: that it exposes shareholders and employees to billions of dollars in risks that they cannot easily see or evaluate. The new accounting rule would also apply to retirees' health plans and other benefits.

A member of the accounting board, George Batavick, said, "We took on this project because the current accounting standards just don't provide complete information about these obligations."

The board is moving ahead with the proposed pension changes even as Congress remains bogged down on much broader revisions of the law that governs company pension plans. In fact, Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio and the new House majority leader, who has been a driving force behind pension changes in Congress, said yesterday that he saw little chance of a finished bill before a deadline for corporate pension contributions in mid-April.

Congress is trying to tighten the rules that govern how much money companies are to set aside in advance to pay for benefits. The accounting board is working with a different set of rules that govern what companies tell investors about their retirement plans.

The new method proposed by the accounting board would require companies to take certain pension values they now report deep in the footnotes of their financial statements and move the information onto their balance sheets — where all their assets and liabilities are reflected. The pension values that now appear on corporate balance sheets are almost universally derided as of little use in understanding the status of a company's retirement plan.

Mr. Batavick of the accounting board said the new rule would also require companies to measure their pension funds' values on the same date they measure all their other corporate obligations. Companies now have delays as long as three months between the time they calculate their pension values and when they measure everything else. That can yield misleading results as market fluctuations change the values.

"Old industrial, old economy companies with heavily unionized work forces" would be affected most sharply by the new rule, said Janet Pegg, an accounting analyst with Bear, Stearns. A recent report by Ms. Pegg and other Bear, Stearns analysts found that the companies with the biggest balance-sheet changes were likely to include General Motors, Ford, Verizon, BellSouth and General Electric.

Using information in the footnotes of Ford's 2005 financial statements, Ms. Pegg said that if the new rule were already in effect, Ford's balance sheet would reflect about $20 billion more in obligations than it now does. The full recognition of health care promised to Ford's retirees accounts for most of the difference. Ford now reports a net worth of $14 billion. That would be wiped out under the new rule. Ford officials said they had not evaluated the effect of the new accounting rule and therefore could not comment.

Applying the same method to General Motors' balance sheet suggests that if the accounting rule had been in effect at the end of 2005, there would be a swing of about $37 billion. At the end of 2005, the company reported a net worth of $14.6 billion. A G.M. spokesman declined to comment, noting that the new accounting rule had not yet been issued.

Many complaints about the way obligations are now reported revolve around the practice of spreading pension figures over many years. Calculating pensions involves making many assumptions about the future, and at the end of every year there are differences between the assumptions and what actually happened. Actuaries keep track of these differences in a running balance, and incorporate them into pension calculations slowly.

That practice means that many companies' pension disclosures do not yet show the full impact of the bear market of 2000-3, because they are easing the losses onto their books a little at a time. The new accounting rule will force them to bring the pension values up to date immediately, and use the adjusted numbers on their balance sheets.

Not all companies would be adversely affected by the new rule. A small number might even see improvement in their balance sheets. One appears to be Berkshire Hathaway. Even though its pension fund has a shortfall of $501 million, adjusting the numbers on its balance sheet means reducing an even larger shortfall of $528 million that the company recognized at the end of 2005.

Berkshire Hathaway's pension plan differs from that of many other companies because it is invested in assets that tend to be less volatile. Its assumptions about investment returns are also lower, and it will not have to make a big adjustment for earlier-year losses when the accounting rule takes effect. Berkshire also looks less indebted than other companies because it does not have retiree medical plans.

Mr. Batavick said he did not know what kind of public comments to expect, but hoped to have a final standard completed by the third quarter of the year. Companies would then be expected to use it for their 2006 annual reports. The rule will also apply to nonprofit institutions like universities and museums, as well as privately held companies.

The rule would not have any effect on corporate profits, only on the balance sheets. The accounting board plans to make additional pension accounting changes after this one takes effect. Those are expected to affect the bottom line and could easily be more contentious.



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Murdoch Will Earn A Payday From MySpace Forbes
One of my favorite sites on the Internet is Amazon.com's little-known Alexa, a traffic-ranking site that finds out its data from a browser toolbar. This toolbar links up similar sites of interest for the user so if you went to, for example, “a pet site,” it would give you links to other popular pet sites as indicated by the behavior of other Alexa users. The Alexa toolbar "phones home" traffic details to its servers so Alexa can keep track of site popularity and surfing habits. People get paranoid about this kind of thing because less ethical companies than Amazon use this type of "phoning home" for spyware purposes like browser hijacking and pop-up serving. However, Alexa doesn’t go in for nasty tricks and is so useful to me that I won’t surf without it. In return for this intelligence, Alexa makes Web site ranking data free on its site and produces what I find to be the most effective market intelligence on the Net. For obvious reasons, expensive market-research people hate this free service, but like many free products on the Web, it has outperformed expensive B2B equivalents. Well, thank you, Amazon. However, it is not Alexa that is exciting me right now; it’s an investment opportunity that it leads me to. Of the top global sites in the Alexa rankings, six are U.S.-based. They are, in order, Yahoo!, Google, MSN from Microsoft, eBay, MySpace and Passport (again from Microsoft ). In terms of market cap, Yahoo!’s is $46 billion, Google’s is $115 billion and eBay’s is $56 billion. I leave Microsoft out of the picture because it is hard to say what part of its market cap can be attributed to its Web site properties, but one would expect that it would be a decent amount of its $280 billion market cap. The reason I’m pulling up these numbers is that MySpace, the social networking site for 18- to 30-year-olds, is a peer, and while it’s not a pure play, market-listed Internet property, you would expect its worth to be somewhere in the region of its counterparts in the global top ten. If this is the case, then its parent company, News Corp., is simply trading at the wrong price. News Corp. bought Intermix, owner of MySpace, last year for a mere $580 million, which in hindsight looks like the purchase of the century. Contrary to its billing in the media, MySpace is not a "kids’ site," not unless you call 18- to 30-year-old kids. Instead, a quick surf around the site throws up the faces of the young demographic that advertisers so crave. The 18-30 crowd make MySpace its Internet home in the same way that the previous generation made AOL theirs. What is more rare is the fact that more women are on MySpace than men. MySpace is a Net phenomenon that is happening right now; the traffic graphs on Alexa show it all. Having worked with AOL in a period when the company went from 1 million subscribers to 40 million, I find MySpace’s growth to be uncannily similar. Again, Amazon’s Alexa highlights what is going on. In recent weeks, MySpace has gone from the 14th most popular site in the world to eighth, a mighty jump in the World Wide Web space, where traffic is measured on logarithmic scales when absolute ranking is involved. Of course, a viral social-networking service should grow exponentially, but when this kind of growth kicks in, valuations of the business involved must change just as fast. News Corp. has a market cap of $53 billion, a figure that hasn’t changed much in two years. Its stock has traded in a channel between $15 and $19, and in a pattern that must have made "swing traders" good profits. In short, News Corp. has been going nowhere for two years. Does the market realize the implications of News Corp.’s purchase of MySpace? Without MSN’s new site demographic tools, which are in beta and only available to advertisers, you wouldn’t know that more than 50% of MySpace users were female. And if you didn’t know about Alexa, you couldn’t tell that MySpace traffic was growing ballistically. So perhaps the market doesn’t know. That, however, is bound to change. Detractors will say the site will be hard to monetize, but then they said that about search engines and, before that, about portals. News Corp. does $20 billion in sales from its fleet of world-class media properties and has been on a recent Internet buying binge, which would seem to be paying off magnificently. The MySpace purchase puts News Corp on the front grid of Internet companies, and this single stellar deal will soon earn the company a re-rating. Even though News Corp. is no Internet darling, has no Silicon Valley headquarters and no train set running around Ruport Murdoch’s office, it has nonetheless vaulted the new-media abyss that so many established old-media companies are set to tumble into. In any event, there is no sign in News Corp.’s stock chart of the impact of its owning a global top ten Internet property. That surely is set to change.
Clem Chambers, Adviser Soapbox - Clem Chambers is CEO of stocks and investment Web site ADVFN. E-mail him at clemcham@advfn.com

Eye on rival YouTube, Atom overhauls video site Yahoo! NEWS
Online video and game company Atom Entertainment Inc. on Thursday unveiled a new service to let people upload their own videos and footage taken on mobile phones. Privately held Atom, formed 5 years ago by the merger of Atom Films and Shockwave.com, hopes the new features on its AddictingClips Web site will draw more users and close the gap with YouTube, a popular site for sharing homemade video clips. Atom Chief Executive Mika Salmi said YouTube probably receives more than 10 times the number of unique visitors than his site does, but added: "With all these new features we think it's a bit of a horse race." Salmi said he expected the Atom site's traffic to grow fairly quickly. "Our goal would be to get to the size of YouTube," Salmi told Reuters, "but realistically, we think that in the next three to four months, we're going to be nipping at their heels." Atom would highlight the best videos on AtomFilms, its Web site for showing independent short films, Salmi said. The new features add to the semiprofessional films and short films currently shown on the site. That would help draw advertisers, many of whom have been reluctant to sponsor video Web sites because of the racy or mature content that often appears on them, Salmi said. "We have AtomFilms, so we immediately have a place where we can elevate the best stuff," Salmi said. "We have carved out a kind of advertising-safe area." Atom's video service also competes with an offering from Web search leader Google Inc., which aims to let video producers sell their clips online.

Google beefs up local advertising with logos Yahoo! NEWS
Internet search leader Google Inc. on Thursday began offering marketers more features for local advertising, allowing them to add logos and business information to their listings on a Google map. Local advertising on the Internet is expected to be a prime driver of growth in the sector. The new features allow an advertiser to insert a business logo or picture in a balloon that pops up next to its location on the Google map, as well as provide additional information in several lines of text, such as a phone number of business description. It can be used by any advertiser targeting a local market, from a neighborhood plumber to the closest restaurant of a national fast-food chain. "Since we launched maps last year, advertisers have come to us asking for more control on (Google) local," Dominic Preuss, product manager of local advertising at Google, told Reuters. "There has been really strong demand for this." The Google Local service already provides textual information on a business when a user conducts a search, and a reference map with the street address. Advertisers can purchase the space through Google's AdWords program, where marketers bid via an auction-style system for popular search terms related to their business. Preuss said Google will not charge an additional fee for the map icons, but the price will be determined by the auction system. "If people find these ads are more valuable they will bid higher," he said. "It will simply be market driven." Google has been testing the service over the last two weeks with a handful of advertisers, including bookseller Barnes & Noble. The features become available to the wider marketing community on Thursday night. Earlier this week, Google said it reached an agreement to allow Verizon Communications Corp.'s online directory SuperPages.com to sell Google search terms to its millions of listed businesses, aiming to boost for its local advertising base.
By Michele Gershberg

VeriSign Gets Boost From Domain Name Registration Forbes - Market Scan
VeriSign's fiscal first quarter is tracking slightly better than expected, driven by an increase in domain name registrations that will contribute to revenue going forward, according to a report from research firm Piper Jaffray. "We believe that with the Jamba! numbers reset, pressure has largely been lifted from the story and expectations can shift to the more predictable pieces of the VeriSign business," wrote analyst Gene Munster in a research note. The analyst's recent checks revealed that .com and .net domain name registrations, which account for 15% to 20% of total VeriSign revenue, were up 12.2% from the end of the fourth quarter to the end of the first quarter. Munster is currently modeling for first-quarter revenue in this segment to increase 6.5% quarter-over-quarter. Since this revenue is recognized on a deferred basis, the full impact of any better-than-expected quarterly growth in VeriSign's registry business will likely not be seen in the March quarter, but a "significant" portion will be added to deferred revenue, the Piper analyst noted. Munster maintained an "outperform" rating and $27 price target on VeriSign shares.
Maya Roney

Nasdaq withdraws LSE takeover bid BBC NEWS
The US Nasdaq Stock Market has withdrawn its proposed £2.43bn ($4.2bn) bid for the London Stock Exchange (LSE) after the latter rejected its advance. "Nasdaq announces that it no longer intends to make an offer for the LSE," the US exchange said. Earlier this month, shares in the LSE jumped by 30% following speculation of a bid war. On Thursday they fell 8%. Nasdaq's move sparked speculation that the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Euronext would table counter-bids. The US exchange gave no reasons for the decision to pull its 950p-a-share bid offer, but said that it could return to the bid arena if the LSE's board had a change of heart or if a rival launched an offer.

String of suitors
Nasdaq follows in the footsteps of German rival Deutsche Boerse and Australian bank Macquarie who both withdrew their offers for the LSE after being rejected by its board. See the LSE's share price - The Nasdaq's 580-pence-a-share offer trumped the amount Macquarie was willing to pay, but the LSE still rejected it saying that it "substantially" undervalued the group. The latest development in the takeover saga will heighten speculation that the NYSE may launch its own bid offer now that it has been given a clear run. If the NYSE did decide to make an approach it would become the fourth major world exchange to show an interest in the London exchange. Germany's Deutsche Boerse kicked off the takeover race for the exchange with a £1.25bn approach in 2004. It later walked away in the face of shareholder protests. Paris-based Euronext has also expressed an interest in the London exchange. Earlier this week, the LSE said it was on track for an excellent trading performance in 2006, but has declined to comment on Thursday's decision by the Nasdaq to abandon its bid. "Business continues to go from strength to strength," an LSE spokesman said.

Oxy Mulls Over a Move Into Refining

Seeing opportunity in a former banana plantation near the Panama
Canal, Occidental Petroleum Corp. may do something it has never
done in its storied, 86-year history: build a refinery. By Chris
Kraul and Elizabeth Douglass.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1A...Io30G2B0HPqQ0EP

Bill on 401(k)s Raises Worries

WASHINGTON-A House proposal would allow firms that run the pension
plans to also give advice to the investors. Critics fear a
conflict of interest. By Jonathan Peterson.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1A...Io30G2B0HPqR0EQ

Judge Won't Seal Producer's Legal Fight

Television impresario Aaron Spelling won't be allowed to keep
portions of his own courtroom drama out of the public view. By
Claire Hoffman.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1A...Io30G2B0HPqS0ER

Sunscreen Ads Burn Buyers, Suit Says

A San Diego law firm best known for going after Enron Corp. and
other companies on behalf of shareholders has found a new target:
sunscreen manufacturers. By Lisa Girion.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e1A...Io30G2B0HPqT0ES

Sony goes prime-time with "LocationFree TV" Yahoo! NEWS
Sony's dream of freeing TV from the confines of the living room is looking more like reality with a gadget that allows you to watch local broadcasts on a PC even if you are thousands of miles from home. Imagine checking out your local news channel during an international flight or enjoying your favorite baseball team live while on a business trip in Dubai. Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news). is notching up strong sales of a small black box that can do just that, providing that the airplane is Wi-Fi enabled and your hotel in Dubai has a broadband connection. The book-sized device plugs into your home TV antenna, converts the signal to the MPEG-4 digital standard, encrypts it for security and streams it over the Internet to your PC. It also works with Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) handheld video game device and compatible mobile phones will be out soon. "I want to put it into any electronics device that has communications ability and a display," Satoru Maeda, head of Sony's "LocationFree TV" business, said in an interview. This is not Sony's first try at what the industry calls "place-shifting TV." Over five years ago, Sony launched the Airboard -- a wireless flat screen device designed to be carried around the house to view television or the Web. But it failed to gain much traction with consumers, who were excited about the idea but not happy about paying more than 100,000 yen ($852.20) for the device. Sony's new LocationFree Base Station, which retails for about 32,000 yen ($272.70) in Japan, including proprietary software, seems to have struck a sweet spot. It is a hit with Japanese men in their 30's and 40's, especially those stationed overseas who want to watch their favorite programing from Japan. The gadget can also be hooked up to a DVD recorder, allowing for viewing of prerecorded shows. "People come into the store asking for the product by name. It practically sells itself," said a salesman at a major retailer in Tokyo's famous Akihabara electronics district.

LICENSE TO SELL
Location Free TV has the full backing of chief executive Howard Stringer, which created a buzz around the technology at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas by showing how the PSP can show live television from anywhere in the world. Sony currently sells the base station in Japan, the United States, Canada, Taiwan and South Korea, and plans to launch it in Europe later this year. It is aiming for global sales to clear 100,000 units in the business year ending on Friday. Maeda said he expected sales to at least double in each of the next few years, but that Sony would actively look to license its technology to other electronics and software makers as a source of income and to ensure that the industry grows. Earlier this week, Sony announced that it would license its location free software for Windows Mobile and cellphones to Japan's Access Co. Ltd., aiming to encourage the development of compatible mobile phones. "We cannot develop this market on our own," Maeda said. Sony only has a handful of competitors, the main one being U.S.-based Sling Media Inc., but several new players are expected to pile into the market, which should boost competition and drive prices down. Maeda said Sony's main advantage was its prime mover status and the fact that it held many key patents on the technology. Still, he acknowledged there were hurdles to overcome. In a demonstration of the technology at Sony's office, the quality of the picture on the PC was noticeably below regular TV viewing, while the picture on the PSP was very sharp and clear. But indications are that many consumers don't care if the picture is perfect or not. "People seem to be satisfied even if the picture quality is not great. They are just happy if they can see what they want even if they aren't at home," the Akihabara salesman said.
By Nathan Layne

Microsoft lawyer sees breakthrough in EU hearing Yahoo! NEWS
Microsoft's top lawyer said on Friday he believed there had been a breakthrough in the software company's dispute with the European Commission at a hearing into the antitrust fines ordered by Brussels. "As I said in the hearing, I believe that we have had a breakthrough," Brad Smith told reporters at the end of the two-day hearing. He said Microsoft now had "greater clarity" regarding the antitrust case, which would help to bring about a solution.

iPod inspires Coke's planned outdoor splash Yahoo! NEWS
When the grand old man of consumer brands, Coke, found it had lost a little of its shimmer, it turned to the latest brand sensation -- iPod -- for inspiration. The world's biggest soft drink company, Coca-Cola Co., is set to launch its new "Welcome to the Coke side of life" advertising blitz this weekend, but only after studying a new icon, Apple Computer Inc.'s popular iPod digital music player. Analysts said the company that taught the world to sing with "The Real Thing" in the 1970s and struck a chord with "Have a Coke and a Smile" in the early 1980s is still struggling to find a new catchphrase and imagery that will stick. Apart from a series of television ads, Coke will emphasize outdoor advertising more than it has in the past with a range of colorful wallscapes -- some as high as 200 feet -- depicting myriad colors and images splashing out of a Coke bottle. Katie Bayne, senior vice president of Coca-Cola brands, told reporters during a presentation this week that Coke studied Apple's print and outdoor communication, noting that it had a lot of clarity. Apple's "Silhouettes" campaign, with its graphic imagery of shadowy figures dancing while listening to music on their iPods, served as a reminder about the product to consumers on the move, advertising experts said. "It is important with big brands that we evoke the feeling of what we are trying to say to people as opposed to telling people. You feel what the benefit of iPod is in the creative," said Esther Lee, Coke's chief creative officer, adding that Coke is trying to do the same with its advertising. Coke, going a step further to grab consumers' attention, will have some billboards hold just the image of the Coke bottle with the splash of color from the bottle spilling all over the facade of the building it is mounted on. But at least one industry watcher expressed reservations about Coke's plans. "iPod is all about being hip and cool and they can get away with billboards that are just colorful and are just there as a reminder, which is what outdoors is about," said Jack Trout, president of marketing strategy firm Trout & Partners. "If I were to use outdoor for Coke, I would do the exact opposite. I would run 19th century billboards. That would be startling," Trout said.
By Anupama Chandrasekaran

Coldplay top 2005's global charts BBC NEWS
Coldplay had the world's best-selling album of 2005, beating Mariah Carey and 50 Cent, according to official figures. The British band's album X&Y sold 8.3 million copies around the world, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) reports. It beat Mariah Carey's The Emancipation of Mimi, which sold 7.7 million, and 50 Cent's The Massacre, with 7.5 million. The figures also showed digital music sales tripled last year but overall global music sales were down 3%. The success of Coldplay's third album - released last June - confirms their position as one of the most popular bands in the world.

1. Coldplay, X&Y (8.3m)
2. Mariah Carey, The Emancipation of Mimi (7.7m)
3. 50 Cent, The Massacre (7.5m)
4. Black Eyed Peas, Monkey Business (6.8m)
5. Green Day, American Idiot (6.4m)
6. Madonna, Confessions on a Dance Floor (6.3m)
7. Kelly Clarkson, Breakaway (6.1m)
8. Eminem, Curtain Call (5.5m)
9. James Blunt, Back to Bedlam (5.5m)
10. Robbie Williams, Intensive Care (5.4m)
Source: IFPI
It earned them two Brit Awards in February, but frontman Chris Martin caused a scare among fans and record company shareholders by using the ceremony to say "we won't see you for a long time". A band spokesman insisted Coldplay were "not quitting" and would start work on new material soon. The Black Eyed Peas were fourth in the worldwide album chart with Monkey Business, followed by American Idiot by Green Day. Madonna was ahead of American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson in sixth spot with her Confessions on a Dance Floor CD. Rap star Eminem's greatest hits album Curtain Call narrowly beat James Blunt's debut Back to Bedlam, with both selling about 5.5 million. Robbie Williams was the third British act on the list, enjoying 5.4 million global sales of Intensive Care at number 10. The value of digital music sales jumped to $1.1bn (£633m) last year, up from $400m (£230m) in 2004, according to the IFPI report. But record company revenues for CDs and music DVDs - which account for most of the market - dropped 6.7%.

'digital Piracy'
Record company revenues were worth a total of $21bn (£12bn) last year, the IFPI reported. IFPI chairman John Kennedy said: "Physical music sales declined again for a combination of reasons, including digital and physical piracy, competition from other entertainment products and the shift in consumer spending to online and mobile. "In 2006, we expect to see continued growth online and more innovative mobile services attracting music fans into the legal digital market. "All our member record companies are now aggressively licensing and marketing music in digital formats."

Kerry Blasts Bush Administration on Small Business Development Oversight Yahoo! NEWS
Today U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), Ranking Democrat on the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, called on the Bush Administration to take steps to address a pattern of poor and non-existent oversight of small business contracting programs. Kerry sent a letter to Small Business Administration (SBA) head Hector Barreto expressing his concerns that the government is ignoring its responsibility to enforce regulations in its cornerstone business development program, as outlined in a March 16, 2006 report by the agency's Office of Inspector General. "Incompetence, ineffective leadership, inept management in responding to Hurricane Katrina, and a complete dereliction of duty by the Bush Administration to oversee federal contracts is hurting our small businesses," said Kerry. "In case after case, reports like this one from the SBA's own inspector general find significant failures in this Administration's oversight. This latest report proves the Administration is hurting the very program that helps minority and women-owned firms access federal contracts. The Administration offers lip service about doing more with less, but it's America's small businesses that get less with more -- less oversight, less accountability, less opportunities and more red tape, more failure, and more disappointment." The nation's top program for socially and economically disadvantaged firms, the 8(a) Business Development program is key to helping African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, Asian Pacific Americans, and women owned businesses gain access to contracts with federal agencies. However, the Inspector General's report found ineffective monitoring by the SBA of 26 agencies' implementation of the program. Agencies failed to "detect if companies were not complying with (8 (a)) regulations" and SBA performed no oversight of the Agencies or the contractors, which resulted in violations of the regulations, according to the report. Kerry wrote, "For over three decades, this essential business development program has assisted countless firms in creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, billions in tax revenue, and has played a direct role in the creation of a diverse supplier base for the federal government. An effective level of oversight must be maintained to ensure that violators are identified and held accountable for their actions. The SBA cannot allow inaction by procuring agencies or within its own ranks to undermine its cornerstone business development program." To read the full text of the letter Kerry sent to SBA, please visit: http://sbc.senate.gov/democrat/lettersout/...LettertoSBA.pdf.
Kathryn Seck of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship

Netflix hopes customers will fall for "Cowboy" Yahoo! NEWS
Online DVD renter Netflix Inc. hopes its subscribers will fall in love this week with "Cowboy del Amor," and many other unsung movies it is quietly buying at film festivals to release in arthouse theaters. Netflix will begin offering its customers the low-budget, independent "Cowboy" film as the first title it has backed with a theatrical release under a strategy to be the only place cinephiles can rent some small, critically praised works. Typically, DVD rentals get a boost from the publicity films receive in theatrical release. That is especially true for low-budget and art-house films like "Cowboy," which was released at theaters in a handful of cities for a few days in February. Netflix's publicity department made sure "Cowboy" -- a documentary by award-winning filmmaker Michele Ohayon about an ex-rodeo cowboy who runs what he calls a "woman bidness" to introduce lonely American men to marriage-minded Mexican women -- got noticed by reviewers. For the next month, "Cowboy" will be available only at Netflix. "I was married to an American woman for 17-1/2 years. She spoke perfect English and I never could understand her," begins the film's folksy narration, by "Cowboy Cupid" Ivan Thompson, who Netflix sent out on a media tour, including a visit to Howard Stern's radio show set for Monday. Lonely and unable to find an American wife, Thompson ran an ad in a Mexican newspaper more than 16 years ago and said he was astounded to receive replies from more than 80 women, including one from the gal he married, then divorced -- twice. "I said to myself, 'Self, this will make a good bidness,' and so I started doing it for the public," Thompson explained. The film, shot over three years in Mexico, New Mexico and Texas, traces the varying successes of three of Thompson's customers in finding cross-border love. "To present a woman good, I have to be enthused about 'em and like 'em, so it's a whole lot like the horse bidness," Thompson muses toward the end of "Cowboy."

'DATA-DRIVEN HUNCHES'
Data collected on Netflix's 4.2 million subscribers' movie tastes help the company find an audience for hidden gems like "Cowboy," Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said. "We do fill a unique niche around small-market films," Sarandos said. Netflix often recommends little-known films to subscribers based on ratings customers give to earlier movies they have rented. Netflix's practice has built a level of trust among subscribers who believe the company is recommending a movie they will like. The company, which pioneered online DVD rental, began dabbling in distributing small films in 2004 with DVD releases of films such as "Born Into Brothels," a documentary on the children of prostitutes in Calcutta, which later won an Academy Award for best documentary. From "Brothel," Netflix learned "the importance of making the film an event for a particular audience but not trying to make one film for everybody," Sarandos said. "Being able to identify what niche wants a particular film and marketing that film (to them) ... is really valuable." Sarandos said he and his staff plan to secure rights to 100 more titles per year based on what he called "data-driven hunches." Sarandos saw "Cowboy Del Amor" at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas, and realized it was made by Ohayon, whose previous two films, "The First Year" and "It Was A Wonderful Life," were distributed exclusively by Netflix. "As far as I'm concerned everything I have done with Netflix has been successful," Ohayon said. "I know that every film has a long shelf life if you handle it right. There was complete respect for the filmmaking behind it, which is a filmmaker's dream."
By Gina Keating

Hollywood studios to offer digital movies for sale Yahoo! NEWS
Two online movie services, Movielink and CinemaNow, on Monday said they will begin selling major films such as "Memoirs of a Geisha" on the same day DVDs are sold at stores in a watershed event for Hollywood in the digital age. Movielink said it signed download-to-own deals with six major studios, and CinemaNow unveiled similar pacts with two big players as well as independent LionsGate Entertainment Corp., the studio behind this year's Oscar winner "Crash." "This is an endorsement that digital delivery of high value content has finally arrived," Movielink Chief Executive Officer Jim Ramo told Reuters. CinemaNow CEO Curt Marvis called it "one giant step for digital distribution." Until now, both services offered digital movie downloads for a rental period only. Some films have been available to buy, but mainly those movies have been B grade flicks. This week Movielink will begin selling copies of award winning gay romance "Brokeback Mountain." Future releases include " Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "King Kong." CinemaNow will have comedy "Fun with Dick and Jane" and horror hit "Saw II" among others. Both services will have hundreds of new and old titles available to own. Movielink's deal is with Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Bros, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Paramount Pictures -- the studios that own Movielink -- as well as Twentieth Century Fox. CinemaNow signed Sony, MGM and Lionsgate, which holds a big stake in CinemaNow. Movielink's prices will range from $20 to $30, but could go as low as $10 for older, "classic" movies. CinemaNow's will range from $9.95 to $19.95. Both sites will allow consumers to copy digital movies for backup use. Those copies will be software protected so they can not be burned onto DVD discs and replayed on DVD players.

MORE STUDIO DEALS SOON
Both Ramo and Marvis said they expect further deals with the remaining major studios to come in a short period of time. Likewise, Universal Pictures President Rick Finkelstein said he expects to be signing pacts with other online services. "There is nothing proprietary about this," Finkelstein said. For years, Hollywood's major studios have been reluctant to offer new movies for sale in digital form for many reasons including the fear of piracy, which on DVD and videocassette costs more than $3.5 billion a year in lost revenue and unknown millions more in illegal swapping of digital files. The studios also debated whether offering digital downloads would cannibalize sales in the booming DVD market, but DVD sales growth is now slowing while downloads of digital video recently have started to take-off. All the players said Apple Computer Inc.'s deal with The Walt Disney Co.'s ABC television network to make TV shows available on Apple's iTunes music Web site was a key event; iTunes' subsequent success in selling TV show downloads has shown there is a growing consumer appetite for video. Moreover, the second half of 2006 is expected to bring a number of TV devices, such as Intel Corp.'s new, compact Viiv PC, that allow consumers to connect their TV directly to the Web and download and store movies at home. "We're seeing, not only a crossroads in consumer demand, but the ... problem of getting the Internet connected to the TV is starting to get solved," Ramo said. Universal Pictures is operated by the NBC Universal unit of General Electric Co.. Sony Pictures is owned by Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news)., Warner Bros. by Time Warner Inc. and Paramount Pictures by Viacom Inc. Twentieth Century Fox is owned by News Corp.. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is owned by a consortium of investors including Sony and Comcast Corp.
By Bob Tourtellotte

Chef's odyssey wins first books-from-blogs prize Yahoo! NEWS
An amateur chef's account of her attempt to cook celebrated U.S. chef Julia Child's recipes on Monday took home the first literary garland devoted to books based on blogs. Julie Powell, a 32-year-old Texas-raised New Yorker, beat 89 other contenders for the first Blooker Prize and won $2,000 from the award's sponsor Lulu, a U.S.-based digital do-it-yourself publishing house. Powell's "Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen" chronicled her odyssey trying to cook every recipe in Child's classic "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." "The community aspect of blogging and the interaction with others kept me honest and kept me writing," Powell said. The blog (juliepowell.blogspot.com) was published last year in book form by Warner Book Group's Little, Brown imprint, and went on to sell more than 100,000 copies. Time Warner is selling Warner Book Group to French media company Lagardere. Cory Doctorow, editor of the popular Boingboing blog http://www.boingboing.net and chairman of the three-judge Blooker panel, said Powell won because her approach was funny and engaging. "It does the thing that all great non-fiction needs to do: makes a subject interesting because of how it's covered, not because of the subject itself," Doctorow said. "I don't care about French food but I loved this book." The Blooker fiction prize went to ghost story "Four and Twenty Blackbirds" (wicked.wish.livejournal.com) by Cherie Priest, and the comics winner was Zach Miller for his self-published "Totally Boned" http://www.joeandmonkey.com. Each was awarded $1,000. Though entries were submitted from Africa to Australia, all three winners of the inaugural prizes were American. Books derived from online blogs took another step into the mainstream last month when an anonymous female author's diary from Iraq, known as "Baghdad Burning," was nominated for Britain's prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize for contemporary non-fiction. The Blooker Prize is so named as both a hybrid word combining book and blog and as a nod to Britain's coveted Man Booker Prize for the best book of the year from British, Irish and Commonwealth writers.
By Jeffrey Goldfarb

Mapquest unveils navigation help on mobile phones Yahoo! NEWS
AOL unit MapQuest on Monday unveiled a mobile map service that customers can use on their cellular phones, complete with voice directions, text and maps in a bid to expand on the popularity of its Internet maps. The MapQuest Navigator will be marketed as a cheaper alternative to navigation systems built into cars. In order to get the software for the service to consumers' phones, MapQuest is working on agreements with cellphone operators. The service could work in cellphones sold by Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp., the company said. "A big part of our future is mobile ... We have users of mapquest.com that already trust us. This is just a better way for us to guide our users to their destinations," said Alan Beiagi, MapQuest's general manager of wireless. MapQuest, which has about 40 million monthly users of its Internet driving directions and mapping services, hopes its online popularity and features such as turn-by-turn voice prompts give it an edge over offers from rivals such as Google Inc. and InfoSpace. Sprint recently started offering directions and other local data from InfoSpace Inc.. The MapQuest Navigator aims to commercialize location-pinpointing technology that is being put into most U.S. mobile phones, along with MapQuest's online map technology. U.S. cellphone service providers are required by law to put location technology in new phones in order to help public safety workers find callers in an emergency. But while a brand can help gain consumers' attention in what is an emerging market, it is not enough unless the service works well, independent media analyst Greg Sterling said. "It gives it a jump start, but brand is only as good as what it delivers," said Sterling, who believes that such services are "several years away from mainstream adoption." Sterling said he had not test-driven the application. According to mobile research firm m:metrics, about 4.3 percent of U.S. mobile users used map services on their phone in the month of January. Beiagi expects MapQuest's combination of text with voice prompts and text instructions will help make such services attractive for consumers. "If you're in a car .... you want to be able to make a decision extremely quickly. The best way to do it is to have a voice prompt," he said. He said that pricing of the service would depend on carriers but he hopes consumers would pay subscription fees in the ballpark of about $4 or more a month. AOL and MapQuest are owned by Time Warner Inc..

China Surpasses U.S. In Internet Use Forbes
Chinese Internet users spend nearly two billion hours online each week, while the U.S. audience logs on for 129 million hours per week. That's the bombshell Dr. Charles Zhang, chairman and CEO of Sohu.com, dropped last month after ringing the opening bell at the Nasdaq, a milestone for a Beijing-based company. Zhang reported that, according to his internal research, Chinese Internet users numbered over 150 million--and possibly up to 200 million--and Sohu.com, including all of their properties, was in the top five most trafficked sites in the world. Nielsen NetRatings, which doesn't have statistics for China, reports that the U.S. had 154 million active users in January 2006. This means that China, if Zhang is correct, is at or above the U.S. in the number of Internet users and that these users stay connected far longer each time. How could the milestone of China surpassing the U.S. in Internet users have gone so unremarked? It turns out that it isn't that easy collecting data on over a billion people in a country as vast as China, where most people are not connected by phone lines. The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) reports that the number of active Chinese Internet users was 111 million by Dec. 31, 2005, up from 94 million a year earlier. And over the past two years, it has been growing at a steady rate of 18%. However, according to Zhang, the CNNIC polling is conducted by calling fixed line phones. "Young people do not use fixed line phones. They all have mobile phones," Zhang said, explaining why he believes the CNNIC is reporting lower-than-accurate numbers. Even if we assume that China is still behind the U.S. in terms of users, China definitely wins in another critical area. One of the most valued metrics of Internet usage (especially for advertisers) is time spent online. Chinese users average 15.9 hours per week, while Yahoo!, the most popular Internet site in the U.S., can only get its users to stick around for less than one hour per week (216.5 minutes per month according to ComScore Media Metrix). That's 1.765 billion hours per week online in China, compared with 129 million hours per week online in the U.S. What's up with all that time online? This is the first time in Chinese history that the nation has been connected.Indeed, according to the CNNIC, 67.9% of online use in China is spent devouring news, more than searching (65.7%) and e-mailing (64.7%). By contrast, only 3% of Yahoo!'s U.S. traffic clicks over to news.* Moreover, China has a lot more room to grow than the U.S. While roughly half of the U.S. population is actively using the Internet, just 11.7% of the Chinese population is currently plugged in.

Internet Users In China
[b]Location_Number Of users (mil)_% Of Population%[/n]
GuangDong_______14.8_________17.9
Shandong_________ 9.9_________10.8
Shanghai__________4.6_________26.6
Beijing____________4.3_________28.7
Henan____________ 4.0__________4.1
Hunan____________ 3.5__________5.2
Source: China Internet Network Information Center, CNNIC.net

There are 400 million cell phone users in China, with over 6.1 million mobile users connecting online.** As cell phones increasingly become the connection of choice, you can expect China, which is a generation ahead of the U.S. in mobile technology, to lead the world in mobile Internet-access growth. And everything will hit hyperdrive over the next two years, as the country ramps up to host the summer Olympics, which are being held in Beijing in 2008. So why is Sohu.com the hottest site on the Web these days, when Baidu.com is the better known brand in the U.S.? Sohu.com is up 40% this year, while Baidu.com, the blazing IPO of last summer, has lost 9% since January and is down 63% from its 52-week high. While Sohu.com, Sina.com and Baidu.com are all in the top ten of most popular global Internet site--above Amazon.com (nasdaq: AMZN - news - people ) and AOL--Sohu.com has twice the revenue and three times the net profit of Baidu.com. And Sohu.com is the official Web site for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Additionally, Sohu.com was the first publicly traded Chinese company, alongside Sina.com, to adopt Sarbanes-Oxley accounting standards, which speaks well of the management team of Zhang and CFO Carol Yu. Is Sohu.com better than Baidu.com for your portfolio? I asked that question and more in the Forbes.com Video Network Q&A with Sohu.com's Zhang. Natalie Pace is the founder and chief executive of iSophia, a global investment network.
*Source: Alexa.com
**Source: CNNIC
Natalie Pace

CNET's photo-sharing site angles at college crowd Yahoo! NEWS
Photo-sharing site Webshots is taking aim at its audience of college students, offering tailored sites for more than 4,000 universities to plan and document their semesters' worth of parties and social events. Social networking online at sites like Webshots or News Corp.'s MySpace is expected to be one driver of growth for Internet and media companies as an expanding audience draws advertiser dollars. Webshots, owned by CNET Networks , said it will dedicate sections of its site to colleges and universities in the United States, Britain and Canada, where students can post event announcements and pool photos afterward. The site estimates its college audience alone at about 3 million people out of some 20 million monthly users. Access to the college sections is restricted to users who have a university-based e-mail address with the ".edu" suffix. The service includes a ranking of most popular photos and students, as well as event-planning tools like electronic invitations. The college-specific sites will run advertising targeted at their specific institution and allow users to choose some of the marketing messages they would like to receive. Webshots screens for nudity, violence and hateful language, as do many Web communities, and will urge users in an ad campaign to act in good conscience when posting pictures. "Treat your friends right. Don't publish something you might regret," reads one ad, under the digitally obscured photo of a young woman vomiting at a toilet. Green said the sites won't necessarily save students from their more potentially embarrassing exploits. "You will still find all sorts of stuff that's unexpected and provocative," said Martin Green, senior vice president at CNET. "We're all saying its all fun and games until someone wants to run for office."

Music industry unleashes more lawsuits in Europe Yahoo! NEWS
The music industry launched a new wave of lawsuits and criminal proceedings against file-sharers across Europe on Tuesday, part of its drive to curb online piracy and encourage the use of legal music services. About 2,000 cases were launched in 10 countries, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said in a statement, bringing the total to 5,500 people in 18 countries. That figure does not include the United States, covered by its sister group, the Recording Industry Association of America, which has filed about 18,000 lawsuits. Among the countries targeted was Portugal, where sales of physical formats like CDs have slumped by 40 percent in the past four years amid heavy file-sharing usage, especially by college students. Portugal's sales drop is "in part due to downloaded digital music, but much more of the loss is caused by people obtaining music illegally," IFPI Chairman John Kennedy told a Lisbon news conference. Though there were more people listening to music, fewer people were buying it, Kennedy said. "It is a surprise to see the scale of the problem in Portugal," he added, and warned that without anti-piracy measures the music industry in the nation of 10 million people would disappear. Other users targeted for legal action included a Finnish carpenter, a British postman, a Czech IT manager and a German judge, the IFPI said in its statement. "A large number of cases involve men aged between 20 and 35 and parents who have not heeded successive education and warning campaigns," it stated. In Italy authorities have seized more than 70 computers in the search for evidence of illegal file-sharing. The IFPI's legal proceedings were aimed not at people who illicitly downloaded music but "uploaders" who put copyrighted music onto file-sharing networks. The IFPI said last week that digital music sales soared in 2005, but not enough to make up for a continuing decline in physical formats like CDs, sending total sales down 3 percent.
By Henrique Almeida in Lisbon

Yahoo brings user ratings to Finance postings Yahoo! NEWS
Internet media company Yahoo Inc. on Monday introduced a ranking system on its popular Yahoo Finance site, allowing users to select the most useful tidbits of information from its message boards. The ranking system appeared to be a new salvo by Yahoo against main rival Google Inc., which launched a financial news, stock quote and chat service last month. Taking its cue from social networking sites where user voting identifies the most popular postings, Yahoo Finance will let its investment community rate user messages on a scale of 1 to 5. A user can filter the way those messages appear on their Internet browser to list the most highly rated selections, whether for tips on stocks or the best weekend getaway. Message boards on Yahoo and elsewhere on the Internet now list postings chronologically.Yahoo Finance has beefed up its technological infrastructure over the past 12 to 18 months, allowing it to bring more specialized features to readers.Yahoo Finance had more than 31 million unique visitors in February, compared with 23 million for rival MSN Money, which is part of Microsoft Corp., and 15 million for Time Warner Inc.'s AOL Money & Finance, according to tracking firm comScore.

Spitzer sues Direct Revenue over spyware Yahoo! NEWS
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said on Tuesday he has sued Direct Revenue, charging the Internet marketer with secretly installing millions of spyware programs that sent unsolicited advertisements to users' computers. Spitzer, in a statement, said Direct Revenue secretly bundled spyware, that tracked users' Internet habits and caused pop-up ads to appear, into offers for free games or other applications. The lawsuit filed in Supreme Court of the State of New York seeks an order barring Direct Revenue from secretly installing spyware or sending ads through existing spyware programs. Spitzer also asked the court to compel the company to account for its revenue and pay unspecified monetary penalties. Spitzer has been pursuing companies involved in alleged Internet fraud and other misconduct. Last year, he reached a $7.5 million settlement with Intermix Media after suing the company for bundling hidden spyware along with millions of programs it gave away for free. Intermix owns the popular MySpace social networking site and was later purchased by News Corp. The attorney general contends that Direct Revenue "deliberately designed spyware that, once downloaded, was extremely difficult for users to detect and remove." Direct Revenue describes itself as a marketing company that provides "useful content and free software" in exchange for delivering targeted advertising messages with the permission of consumers, according to its Web site. Company officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Germany arrests ring of cyber identity thieves Yahoo! NEWS
German police have arrested seven members of an international gang of so-called "phishers," who hacked into computers of internet banking customers and raided their accounts, authorities said on Tuesday. "The investigation is continuing but what we can say now is they were able to obtain thousands of individual pieces of data," a spokeswoman for the BKA federal crime office said. Three other members of the ring are still under investigation. The word "phishing" is said to derive from a combination of two words, which describes the act of hackers "fishing" for "passwords." A statement posted on the BKA Web site said the shutdown of the phishing ring of Germans and Lithuanians had prevented "millions of euros of losses" that online banking customers would have incurred if the phishers had carried out their plan. The spokewoman said the amount the phishers had successfully stolen from bank accounts was in double-digit thousands. The gang transferred the funds to German bank accounts set up using false names and planned to channel funds to foreign banks in eastern Europe, the BKA statement said. The BKA said the phishing ring had obtained online banking customers' user names and passwords and other sensitive data from their victims' computers by means of a "Trojan horse," a self-circulating, virus-like program that spreads by email and sends data from the infiltrated computer back to the phisher.

GoldMoney boasts sterling online sales Yahoo! NEWS
Online exchange service GoldMoney.com said on Tuesday its customers have purchased more than 1 million ounces of silver since it began offering the metal on its Web site at the start of 2006. By the end of the first quarter, GoldMoney's customers owned 1.3 million ounces of silver bullion valued at $15.4 million and 4.9 tonnes of gold worth $91 million, it said. The company's online platform allows investors and consumers to buy the two precious metals and "digitize" their holdings into currency. "Customer feedback indicates that they like the ease with which they can purchase any amount of silver, which we then store for them in allocated storage, said James Turk, GoldMoney's founder and chairman. Silver and gold prices have reached 22-year and 25-year highs, respectively, as investors turned to metals and other commodities on expectations that they would outperform stocks and bonds. GoldMoney offers silver buy and sell rates in the same four currencies available to customers already transacting in gold -- the U.S. dollar, Canadian dollar, euro and British pound. The firm's gold and silver is stored in a specialized bullion vault near London, England, and is insured by Lloyd's of London. GoldMoney bills itself as the first, largest and fastest-growing digital gold currency, which can be used as a way to invest in the metal and as a solution for online commerce.

Thales in Alcatel satellite deal BBC NEWS
French defence firm Thales has bought the satellite unit of phone equipment firm Alcatel for 673m euros (£471m; $825m) and a large chunk of its shares. The move comes after France's Alcatel agreed to merge with US rival Lucent, a deal that had posed security worries. Alcatel's sensitive satellite unit will now remain in French hands, echoing a similar move by Lucent, which set up a US firm to handle government contracts. The French Government holds a 27% stake in Thales, while Alcatel now owns 22%.

Circling the wagon
A recent spate of consolidation in a number of industries has put governments on their guard over the possiblilty of losing national control over strategic assets. Politicians in the US recently tried to block the sale of P&O to Dubai Ports World, citing worries that a foreign firm would oversee ports in key cities including New York and Miami. France also has flexed its muscles in past months, putting a spanner in the works of any bid for utility Suez by unveiling plans to merge it with Gaz de France. This marriage of convenience was prompted by rumours that Italy's Enel may be planning an approach, and came after France had also moved to protect steel firm Arcelor from Indian rival Mittal Steel. Alcatel's agreement with Thales seems to have eased French concerns. "French Government representatives indicated that, given the commitments made by Alcatel to respect national strategic interest, the merger envisaged between Alcatel and Lucent does not put into question the strategic partnership concluded with Thales," the companies said.

Building blocks
To finance its purchase, Thales said it would issue 26.67 million shares to Alcatel. It added that the deal would not lead to job losses and would boost sales by 2bn euros in the first year. Total savings from the purchase are expected to be close to 50m euros by 2008. Over the weekend, Alcatel said it would merge its telecommunications activities with those of Lucent in a deal valued at close to $14bn. The deal - announced on Sunday - will result in 9,000 jobs being cut across the two companies, representing 10% of their combined workforces. Alcatel will hold 60% of the new firm, which will have sales of about $25bn putting it on a par with industry-leader Cisco.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/HD06Cb04.html
Peugeot Citroen steps up a gear

BEIJING - French automaker PSA Peugeot Citroen plans to build a new production plant and launch a slew of new models in China to boost sales in the world's third-biggest and fastest-growing auto market.

Yves Boutin, chief representative of PSA Peugeot Citroen in China, said on Monday the group would build a new manufacturing base with its Chinese partner Dongfeng Motor Corporation. The plant will be a part of PSA Peugeot Citroen's existing joint venture with Dongfeng, based in Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei province.

Boutin said details such as the exact location, annual production capacity and investment size of the new plant would be revealed in July. The French automaker would introduce nine new models into the joint venture, Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen, from 2006 to 2009, Boutin said.

The new plant and product plans seem to rule out the possibility of PSA Peugeot Citroen seeking a new Chinese partner in the near term. Last year, the French carmaker was reportedly in talks with Hafei Automobile Co Ltd, Mitsubishi Motors' partner in northeast China's Heilongjiang province and Jinhua Youngman Group, a small privately-owned manufacturer of trucks and buses in Zhejiang province.

Boutin said that annual sales of Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen would reach 300,000 cars in 2008. The venture sold 140,000 cars in 2005, surging by 57.5% year-on-year. This represented a sharp rebound from a 14% tumble in 2004.

Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen announced earlier this year that it aimed to increase sales to more than 200,000 cars this year. The venture now has an annual production capacity of 220,000 cars, expected to grow to 300,000 units at the end of this year.

But in 2005, it reported 360 million yuan (US$44.9 million) in losses due to heated price wars in the Chinese auto market and high costs. Executives with the venture said that it would regain profitability this year due to robust sales growth and cost-cutting efforts.

Boutin said the joint venture will make high-end cars by 2010. Currently, the joint venture assembles the Citroen Fukang, Elysee, Picasso, Xsara and Triomphe as well as the Peugeot 307 and 206, which are small and medium-sized vehicles. The Triomphe and 206 were launched earlier this year as part of PSA Peugeot Citroen's new China product lines from 2006 to 2009.

"China's car market is expanding steadily and we are very confident about our new products," Boutin said. PSA Peugeot Citroen recently set up a wholly owned affiliate in Beijing with an investment of 50 million yuan, which would be mainly responsible for its imported car business in China, he added. The subsidiary Peugeot Citroen (China) Automobile Trade Co Ltd would also be in charge of exporting Chinese-made spare car parts to other countries, Boutin said.

The French carmaker's current imported products in China include the Citroen C5 and C4, and the Peugeot 407, 607, 206CC and 307CC.

Last year, PSA Peugeot Citroen's imported car sales in China amounted to 1,300 units, Boutin said. He also said that the group would start to provide loans to Chinese car buyers at the end of June. This will b