NEW YORK — Yahoo has added 17 more newspapers to its group of online publishing partners, giving the group added heft as it approaches its one-year anniversary.
Yahoo executives told The Associated Press that The Columbus Dispatch and 16 regional newspapers owned by The New York Times Co. have joined the consortium, bringing its total number to about 415 dailies and another 140 weeklies. The New York Times itself, however, hasn't joined.
Lem Lloyd, who runs the consortium for Yahoo, said the partnership has already been bearing fruit both for newspaper publishers as well as Yahoo, but he declined to provide specific dollar figures.
The first goal was to integrate the online help-wanted classified advertising listing of newspapers with Yahoo's online job search database HotJobs. Lloyd said that has been proceeding on schedule, with some 377 papers already launched and others on the way.
For newspapers, linking their online recruitment ads with HotJobs is seen as a way to hold on to more advertising dollars amid competition from Internet rivals like Craigslist.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Yahoo New York Times Mcclatchy Tribune Co Medianews Group Hotjobs Cox Newspapers Gannett Co
Other newspapers have linked up with Monster Worldwide in online classified ads or are part of CareerBuilder, a joint venture owned by the three largest newspaper publishers, Gannett Co., Tribune Co. and McClatchy Co.
The Yahoo consortium has continued to sign up new members since its original launch last Nov. 20. It added the New York Daily News Nov. 9 and a group of 12 newspaper publishing companies in April.
Yahoo lets newspapers add job listings to its HotJobs database at a wholesale rate, while newspapers can charge higher prices to advertisers for help-wanted ads that they also upload to HotJobs.
Lloyd said Yahoo has seen a revenue bump in the tens of millions per year, but he said the effect has been varied among the various newspaper partners since they all charge different prices.
One of those partners, Cox Newspapers in Atlanta, says the partnership has "gone very well" to date, according to Leon Levitt, vice president of digital media the company, which is a unit of privately held Cox Enterprises.
Levitt also declined to discuss specific revenue gains, but he said the websites of Cox's 17 newspapers have seen significant increases in traffic since signing up with Yahoo.
In Austin, Texas, for example, where Cox owns the Austin American-Statesman, its market share for online recruitment ads is now 40%, up 19 percentage points from a year ago.
Newspapers in the Yahoo consortium also generally sign up for a system run by Yahoo that will serve advertising to Web viewers, but that won't be operational until 2008, Lloyd said. Members of the newspaper group also share news headlines with Yahoo and have Yahoo become the search provider for their websites.
The consortium, while growing, still has several conspicuous absences, including Gannett and Tribune, the No. 1 and No. 2 newspaper publishers by circulation. Both companies say they are continuing to talk with various parties about cooperating in online advertising. Separately, Gannett, Tribune, MediaNews Group and other publishers are also considering forming a joint ad-sales firm that would sell bundles of advertising to big marketers, Levitt said.
The Washington Post Co. hasn't joined the Yahoo group either, although Caroline Little, the CEO of Washington Post-Newsweek Interactive, said it also is having discussions with potential partners. She declined to identify them or say how far those talks have progressed.
Little said the Post was in an unusual position given its heavy local focus combined with national advertising. "Finding the right fit for us is a bit more tricky," Little said.
And while the 15 newspapers in The New York Times Co.'s regional group as well as the company's Worcester Telegram & Gazette have joined, neither The New York Times itself nor its sister paper, The Boston Globe, have joined.
Denise Warren, the chief advertising officer of the New York Times media group, says the Times' website is different from many other newspaper sites since it has dramatically higher traffic than many newspaper sites — with 17 million unique viewers last month according to Nielsen/NetRatings — and a unique brand for which nearly all of the online advertising is sold in-house rather than through networks.
"We need to consider these things in a very different way and a different mind-set than some of our newspaper colleagues," Warren said.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Wireless tech lets businesses hang up on phone companies
NEW YORK — Consumers chafe at having only two choices — phone line and cable — for high-speed Internet service. For businesses, there are often even fewer options — the offerings of the phone company — due to the limitations of cable.
That's changing, at least in major cities. Internet service providers that use wireless technology to bypass the phone companies' near-monopoly now appear to be gaining traction after a false start at the height of the Internet boom.
The difference between then and now is WiMax, an emerging technology sometimes described as a cousin of the Wi-Fi standard used at home and coffee shop hot spots. WiMax, however, is capable of much greater range, in the tens of miles, and higher speeds.
From the roof of a 27-story Manhattan building, Towerstream Corp. CEO Jeff Thompson can look out over a vast swath of the city, from lowrises in Greenwich Village to the skyscrapers of Midtown. The Towerstream antennas mounted on the roof have the same panoramic view, sending and receiving customers' data.
"I call this our bowl of business," Thompson said. "Every building you can see from here can be a Towerstream customer."
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Internet service providers Wimax Wireless Internet Towerstream Newscast
Towerstream sells connections of up to a gigabit per second, in both directions, but most are less than 20 megabits per second. That's not hugely different from consumer download speeds, but the upstream flow of data is much faster, which is important to businesses.
Speeds like that aren't in sight for consumer WiMax, and it will be years before it's available in most areas. Sprint Nextel Corp. is the major carrier that's planning to roll out WiMax, starting with Chicago later this year, but its long-term commitment to the technology is in question after Chief Executive Gary Forsee was forced out in early October. Sprint also backed out of a plan to combine its WiMax network with that of Clearwire Corp., which focuses on medium-sized cities.
By comparison, business access is low-hanging fruit for WiMax deployment. Offices are usually clustered in business districts. They don't move around, making it possible to put up a fixed antenna, ideally with a clear line sight to the transmitter.
"We're just trying to touch every rooftop out there. That's a lot easier than what Sprint and Clearwire are doing," Thompson said.
Other business-oriented WISPs, or wireless Internet service providers, have popped up as well. In Texas, for instance, iBroadband Inc. serves businesses in Dallas, Fort Worth and Austin with WiMax equipment.
Apart from New York, Waltham, Mass.-based Towerstream now sells service Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Providence, and Boston, where it started service in 2001.
That's also the year that saw the collapse of the previous wave of "fixed wireless broadband" providers. Two of the big names in the business, Teligent and Winstar Communications, filed for bankruptcy after spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build their networks, but failed to get enough customers before money ran out.
Going back even further, telecommunications companies and the military have for decades used wireless links for long-haul data transport, or to connect to difficult locations.
But that was before WiMax, which made fixed wireless connections cheaper and faster. It's backed by a broad industry group that includes big names like Intel Corp. and Samsung, and a host of smaller equipment makers. Equipment from different manufacturers is supposed to be able work together, though the certification process is still in its early stages. Of particular benefit to Towerstream, WiMax lets it use unlicensed, and thus free, spectrum to reach customers.
Winstar's and Teligent's assets have gone through several hands. Parts of Winstar are now a subsidiary of GVC Networks, a telecommunications company focusing on government business. It still uses wireless last-mile links, but not exclusively — like most telecoms focusing on the business market, it leases fixed lines from the local telephone company.
Towerstream's strategy, by contrast, is to get rooftop rights on tall buildings, set up antennas, and start calling all the offices it can see. That's not a surefire strategy either — Speakeasy, an Internet service provider now owned by Best Buy Co., started a similar service broadcasting from Seattle's Space Needle in 2004, but wasn't able to make it sustainable.
Towerstream took over Speakeasy's infrastructure this year, and says its experience and tried business model will make the difference.
Towerstream had $1.7 million in revenue in the quarter ended Sept. 30, making it a small player compared with telecom giants. The newly public company lost $1.6 million in the same period, mainly due to the cost of expanding its reach, but its profit margin on the actual service was 59%. It won't say how many customers it has, but dividing the revenue by the average revenue per user yields a figure of about 900 customers.
Towerstream's big push this year is hiring sales people, a move supported by Eric Kainer, an analyst at ThinkEquity who follows the company.
"Each salesperson adds about $55,000 worth of value every month that they're there, which leads me to believe they should hire all the salespeople they can," Kainer said.
Other telecoms are drawing optical fiber to office buildings, bypassing the telephone companies. But Kainer isn't worried about that — the number of buildings with fiber is still small, given the work it takes to get the new lines pulled in.
And the shared nature of cable lines make them less than ideal for many businesses, who want predictable speeds and fast uploads, though they're useful for smaller businesses. The real competition is the telephone companies.
"If they wind up losing customers to you, they have no idea that they've even lost them," said Kainer, who rates the stock a "Buy." It listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market in May at about $4, but has steadily fallen and now trades around $2.40.
Newscast LLC, a Towerstream customer, gives the service two thumbs up. The company, which shoots and distributes public relations photos and video for corporations, uses it as its only Internet link, and even runs a server over the connection, though that's a temporary setup.
It's based in a former warehouse in Manhattan that isn't well provisioned for telecommunications, but it does have a good view of the Empire State Building, where Towerstream has antennas.
"There's really not an alternative to Towerstream that's in any way reliable," said Newscast vice president Jim Sulley. Before, the company had a T-1 line, the standard low-end broadband connection for businesses. It's provided by the phone company or an Internet service provider that rents the line from the phone company.
But the T-1 was unreliable. The "straw that broke the camel's back," Sulley said, was a third outage in two weeks, caused by a technician who came to connect a fax line for someone else in the building, and disconnected Newscast's T-1 in the process.
Now, Newscast pays $500 a month, half the price of a T-1, for a Towerstream connection that's about three times as fast. (It's guaranteed at 1.5 megabits per second, the same as a T-1, but the actual speed will range up to 5 mbps, in both directions.)
Newscast has had a few minor outages in two and half years with Towerstream, but only one that really caused problems.
"I deal with more problems with Windows in a day than I do in a year with the Internet," Sulley said.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
That's changing, at least in major cities. Internet service providers that use wireless technology to bypass the phone companies' near-monopoly now appear to be gaining traction after a false start at the height of the Internet boom.
The difference between then and now is WiMax, an emerging technology sometimes described as a cousin of the Wi-Fi standard used at home and coffee shop hot spots. WiMax, however, is capable of much greater range, in the tens of miles, and higher speeds.
From the roof of a 27-story Manhattan building, Towerstream Corp. CEO Jeff Thompson can look out over a vast swath of the city, from lowrises in Greenwich Village to the skyscrapers of Midtown. The Towerstream antennas mounted on the roof have the same panoramic view, sending and receiving customers' data.
"I call this our bowl of business," Thompson said. "Every building you can see from here can be a Towerstream customer."
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Internet service providers Wimax Wireless Internet Towerstream Newscast
Towerstream sells connections of up to a gigabit per second, in both directions, but most are less than 20 megabits per second. That's not hugely different from consumer download speeds, but the upstream flow of data is much faster, which is important to businesses.
Speeds like that aren't in sight for consumer WiMax, and it will be years before it's available in most areas. Sprint Nextel Corp. is the major carrier that's planning to roll out WiMax, starting with Chicago later this year, but its long-term commitment to the technology is in question after Chief Executive Gary Forsee was forced out in early October. Sprint also backed out of a plan to combine its WiMax network with that of Clearwire Corp., which focuses on medium-sized cities.
By comparison, business access is low-hanging fruit for WiMax deployment. Offices are usually clustered in business districts. They don't move around, making it possible to put up a fixed antenna, ideally with a clear line sight to the transmitter.
"We're just trying to touch every rooftop out there. That's a lot easier than what Sprint and Clearwire are doing," Thompson said.
Other business-oriented WISPs, or wireless Internet service providers, have popped up as well. In Texas, for instance, iBroadband Inc. serves businesses in Dallas, Fort Worth and Austin with WiMax equipment.
Apart from New York, Waltham, Mass.-based Towerstream now sells service Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Providence, and Boston, where it started service in 2001.
That's also the year that saw the collapse of the previous wave of "fixed wireless broadband" providers. Two of the big names in the business, Teligent and Winstar Communications, filed for bankruptcy after spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build their networks, but failed to get enough customers before money ran out.
Going back even further, telecommunications companies and the military have for decades used wireless links for long-haul data transport, or to connect to difficult locations.
But that was before WiMax, which made fixed wireless connections cheaper and faster. It's backed by a broad industry group that includes big names like Intel Corp. and Samsung, and a host of smaller equipment makers. Equipment from different manufacturers is supposed to be able work together, though the certification process is still in its early stages. Of particular benefit to Towerstream, WiMax lets it use unlicensed, and thus free, spectrum to reach customers.
Winstar's and Teligent's assets have gone through several hands. Parts of Winstar are now a subsidiary of GVC Networks, a telecommunications company focusing on government business. It still uses wireless last-mile links, but not exclusively — like most telecoms focusing on the business market, it leases fixed lines from the local telephone company.
Towerstream's strategy, by contrast, is to get rooftop rights on tall buildings, set up antennas, and start calling all the offices it can see. That's not a surefire strategy either — Speakeasy, an Internet service provider now owned by Best Buy Co., started a similar service broadcasting from Seattle's Space Needle in 2004, but wasn't able to make it sustainable.
Towerstream took over Speakeasy's infrastructure this year, and says its experience and tried business model will make the difference.
Towerstream had $1.7 million in revenue in the quarter ended Sept. 30, making it a small player compared with telecom giants. The newly public company lost $1.6 million in the same period, mainly due to the cost of expanding its reach, but its profit margin on the actual service was 59%. It won't say how many customers it has, but dividing the revenue by the average revenue per user yields a figure of about 900 customers.
Towerstream's big push this year is hiring sales people, a move supported by Eric Kainer, an analyst at ThinkEquity who follows the company.
"Each salesperson adds about $55,000 worth of value every month that they're there, which leads me to believe they should hire all the salespeople they can," Kainer said.
Other telecoms are drawing optical fiber to office buildings, bypassing the telephone companies. But Kainer isn't worried about that — the number of buildings with fiber is still small, given the work it takes to get the new lines pulled in.
And the shared nature of cable lines make them less than ideal for many businesses, who want predictable speeds and fast uploads, though they're useful for smaller businesses. The real competition is the telephone companies.
"If they wind up losing customers to you, they have no idea that they've even lost them," said Kainer, who rates the stock a "Buy." It listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market in May at about $4, but has steadily fallen and now trades around $2.40.
Newscast LLC, a Towerstream customer, gives the service two thumbs up. The company, which shoots and distributes public relations photos and video for corporations, uses it as its only Internet link, and even runs a server over the connection, though that's a temporary setup.
It's based in a former warehouse in Manhattan that isn't well provisioned for telecommunications, but it does have a good view of the Empire State Building, where Towerstream has antennas.
"There's really not an alternative to Towerstream that's in any way reliable," said Newscast vice president Jim Sulley. Before, the company had a T-1 line, the standard low-end broadband connection for businesses. It's provided by the phone company or an Internet service provider that rents the line from the phone company.
But the T-1 was unreliable. The "straw that broke the camel's back," Sulley said, was a third outage in two weeks, caused by a technician who came to connect a fax line for someone else in the building, and disconnected Newscast's T-1 in the process.
Now, Newscast pays $500 a month, half the price of a T-1, for a Towerstream connection that's about three times as fast. (It's guaranteed at 1.5 megabits per second, the same as a T-1, but the actual speed will range up to 5 mbps, in both directions.)
Newscast has had a few minor outages in two and half years with Towerstream, but only one that really caused problems.
"I deal with more problems with Windows in a day than I do in a year with the Internet," Sulley said.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Friday, November 16, 2007
GPS devices help cities save on gas, nab loafers
By Frank Eltman, Associated Press
ISLIP, N.Y. — GPS tracking devices installed on government-issue vehicles are helping communities around the country reduce waste and abuse, in part by catching employees shopping, working out at the gym or otherwise loafing while on the clock.
The use of GPS has led to firings, stoking complaints from employees and unions that the devices are intrusive, Big Brother technology. But city officials say that monitoring employees' movements has deterred abuses, saving the taxpayers money in gasoline and lost productivity.
"We can't have public resources being used on private activities. That's Management 101," Phil Nolan, supervisor of the Long Island town of Islip.
Islip saved nearly 14,000 gallons of gas over a three-month period from the previous year after GPS devices were installed. Nolan said that shows that employees know they are being watched and are no longer using Islip's 614 official vehicles for personal business.
Some administrators around the country emphasized that the primary purpose of the GPS devices is not to catch people goofing off but to improve the maintenance and operation of the vehicles and to design more efficient bus, snowplow and trash-pickup routes. Among other things, the devices can be used to alert mechanics that a car's engine is operating inefficiently.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Long Island GPS Nolan GPS tracking
Still, in Indiana, six employees of the Fort Wayne-Allen County Health Department lost their jobs last year after an administrator bought three Global Positioning Satellite devices out of her own pocket and switched them in and out of 12 department vehicles to nail health inspectors running personal errands on the job.
Employees were caught going to stores, gyms, restaurants, churches and their homes. (And the administrator was reimbursed the $750 she spent.)
One of those who got in trouble, 27-year employee Elaine Pruitt, decried what she called "sneaky" methods. She said she had fallen ill and stopped at her home for a long lunch break, returning to work just 38 minutes late.
Previously, "as long as we got our work done, there was never any problem. All of a sudden, it became wrong if you stopped at a grocery store for some gum," she said.
In Boston two years ago, a snowplow driver was accused of hiding his GPS device in a snowbank and then going off to do some private plowing. The driver pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor larceny charge and was fined $300.
In Denver, 76 vehicles equipped with GPS this year were driven 5,000 fewer miles than the unequipped fleet had during the same period the year before. Denver plans to outfit police cars, snowplows and trash trucks with GPS soon.
"It's growing by leaps and bounds," said Chris Ransom of Networkcar, one of the country's leading providers of GPS systems. "I'd say we're seeing double-digit growth among the municipalities, whether it's statewide or down to the local county."
In Delaware, GPS was used to confirm two employees using state vehicles were going home early, said Terry Barton Jr., fleet administrator for the state. He would not say what action, if any, was taken against the employees.
"If they're in charge of the car and they decide to go visit their Aunt Mary, we'll know that they went someplace they weren't supposed to. It has a chilling effect," he said.
Barton said Delaware paid $425 per unit for the GPS devices, as well as $24.99 a month per vehicle for tracking services. Information from each car is sent back to a central location, where things like fuel consumption and speed are recorded. He estimated the investment will be recouped in 3 ½ years.
"If we're getting fuel reduction, less accidents and have our people slowing down, it more than pays for itself," Barton said.
The Teamsters are negotiating more contracts that protect workers from being spied on or punished as a result of the devices, union spokeswoman Leslie Miller said. She said the union's tentative contract with United Parcel Service prevents the company from firing any employee for a first offense uncovered by GPS unless there is proof of intent to defraud.
Sean Thomas, chief of staff for the Manchester, N.H., mayor's office, said a plan to use GPS units on garbage trucks was scrapped after "some union push-back. "They said, 'You are watching us like Big Brother,"' Thomas said.
GPS is helping improve efficiency in other ways.
Houston officials say they have used GPS on garbage trucks to design more efficient trash-collection routes, reducing fuel costs and other expenses.
This winter, the New Hampshire Transportation Department will begin testing GPS devices in some sand spreaders.
"It's so when Mrs. Smith on Warren Street calls and says we haven't plowed her street, we can say, 'Yes, we have,"' said Phil Bilodeau, Concord, N.H., deputy director of general services. "It's not to check up on drivers, although they would say it is for that purpose."
Boston's school system uses GPS devices on its buses — technology that proves useful when worried parents call because a bus is late.
"It's hugely helpful for us to say, 'The bus is five blocks away,"' schools spokesman Jonathan Palumbo said.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.
ISLIP, N.Y. — GPS tracking devices installed on government-issue vehicles are helping communities around the country reduce waste and abuse, in part by catching employees shopping, working out at the gym or otherwise loafing while on the clock.
The use of GPS has led to firings, stoking complaints from employees and unions that the devices are intrusive, Big Brother technology. But city officials say that monitoring employees' movements has deterred abuses, saving the taxpayers money in gasoline and lost productivity.
"We can't have public resources being used on private activities. That's Management 101," Phil Nolan, supervisor of the Long Island town of Islip.
Islip saved nearly 14,000 gallons of gas over a three-month period from the previous year after GPS devices were installed. Nolan said that shows that employees know they are being watched and are no longer using Islip's 614 official vehicles for personal business.
Some administrators around the country emphasized that the primary purpose of the GPS devices is not to catch people goofing off but to improve the maintenance and operation of the vehicles and to design more efficient bus, snowplow and trash-pickup routes. Among other things, the devices can be used to alert mechanics that a car's engine is operating inefficiently.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Long Island GPS Nolan GPS tracking
Still, in Indiana, six employees of the Fort Wayne-Allen County Health Department lost their jobs last year after an administrator bought three Global Positioning Satellite devices out of her own pocket and switched them in and out of 12 department vehicles to nail health inspectors running personal errands on the job.
Employees were caught going to stores, gyms, restaurants, churches and their homes. (And the administrator was reimbursed the $750 she spent.)
One of those who got in trouble, 27-year employee Elaine Pruitt, decried what she called "sneaky" methods. She said she had fallen ill and stopped at her home for a long lunch break, returning to work just 38 minutes late.
Previously, "as long as we got our work done, there was never any problem. All of a sudden, it became wrong if you stopped at a grocery store for some gum," she said.
In Boston two years ago, a snowplow driver was accused of hiding his GPS device in a snowbank and then going off to do some private plowing. The driver pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor larceny charge and was fined $300.
In Denver, 76 vehicles equipped with GPS this year were driven 5,000 fewer miles than the unequipped fleet had during the same period the year before. Denver plans to outfit police cars, snowplows and trash trucks with GPS soon.
"It's growing by leaps and bounds," said Chris Ransom of Networkcar, one of the country's leading providers of GPS systems. "I'd say we're seeing double-digit growth among the municipalities, whether it's statewide or down to the local county."
In Delaware, GPS was used to confirm two employees using state vehicles were going home early, said Terry Barton Jr., fleet administrator for the state. He would not say what action, if any, was taken against the employees.
"If they're in charge of the car and they decide to go visit their Aunt Mary, we'll know that they went someplace they weren't supposed to. It has a chilling effect," he said.
Barton said Delaware paid $425 per unit for the GPS devices, as well as $24.99 a month per vehicle for tracking services. Information from each car is sent back to a central location, where things like fuel consumption and speed are recorded. He estimated the investment will be recouped in 3 ½ years.
"If we're getting fuel reduction, less accidents and have our people slowing down, it more than pays for itself," Barton said.
The Teamsters are negotiating more contracts that protect workers from being spied on or punished as a result of the devices, union spokeswoman Leslie Miller said. She said the union's tentative contract with United Parcel Service prevents the company from firing any employee for a first offense uncovered by GPS unless there is proof of intent to defraud.
Sean Thomas, chief of staff for the Manchester, N.H., mayor's office, said a plan to use GPS units on garbage trucks was scrapped after "some union push-back. "They said, 'You are watching us like Big Brother,"' Thomas said.
GPS is helping improve efficiency in other ways.
Houston officials say they have used GPS on garbage trucks to design more efficient trash-collection routes, reducing fuel costs and other expenses.
This winter, the New Hampshire Transportation Department will begin testing GPS devices in some sand spreaders.
"It's so when Mrs. Smith on Warren Street calls and says we haven't plowed her street, we can say, 'Yes, we have,"' said Phil Bilodeau, Concord, N.H., deputy director of general services. "It's not to check up on drivers, although they would say it is for that purpose."
Boston's school system uses GPS devices on its buses — technology that proves useful when worried parents call because a bus is late.
"It's hugely helpful for us to say, 'The bus is five blocks away,"' schools spokesman Jonathan Palumbo said.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Microsoft patches a 'critical' hole
SEATTLE (AP) — Microsoft issued two security fixes in a regular monthly update Tuesday, including one that removes a dangerous bug in all versions of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
Microsoft gave the serious security fix its most urgent "critical" rating. Hackers could exploit a vulnerability using Internet Explorer 7, and possibly other programs, and take over a user's computer for a variety of nefarious purposes, such as stealing passwords or pumping out spam.
The security hole "is concerning as it's a publicly known issue that puts computer users at risk," said Ben Greenbaum, a senior research manager on anti-virus software maker Symantec's security response team.
The other fix, which Microsoft gave the second-highest "important" rating, is for computers running versions of Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003. Hackers could exploit the flaw in Microsoft's program to redirect Internet traffic from legitimate sites to fake ones.
Windows users can visit Microsoft's security website to get the updates or configure their computers to automatically update each month.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Microsoft Windows Windows XP Hackers Microsoft software Server
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.
Microsoft gave the serious security fix its most urgent "critical" rating. Hackers could exploit a vulnerability using Internet Explorer 7, and possibly other programs, and take over a user's computer for a variety of nefarious purposes, such as stealing passwords or pumping out spam.
The security hole "is concerning as it's a publicly known issue that puts computer users at risk," said Ben Greenbaum, a senior research manager on anti-virus software maker Symantec's security response team.
The other fix, which Microsoft gave the second-highest "important" rating, is for computers running versions of Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003. Hackers could exploit the flaw in Microsoft's program to redirect Internet traffic from legitimate sites to fake ones.
Windows users can visit Microsoft's security website to get the updates or configure their computers to automatically update each month.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Microsoft Windows Windows XP Hackers Microsoft software Server
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.
Netflix $1M prize for better movie software still available
SAN FRANCISCO — Netflix's system for recommending movies to its subscribers is proving tough to beat, as thousands of engineers and statisticians have discovered after long hours of research.
Hoping to widen its lead in the online DVD rental market, Netflix last year dangled a $1 million reward to anyone who could improve upon the Los Gatos-based company's current movie-recommendation software by at least 10%.
The prize remains on the table, Netflix said Tuesday, for the more than 27,000 contestants from more than 160 countries who have entered the quirky coding contest so far.
To keep the programmers motivated, Netflix is handing out at least $50,000 annually to whoever has come closest to the 10% improvement.
Netflix will give its first "progress prize" next week to three researchers at an AT&T Inc. laboratory in Florham Park, N.J.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: AT DVD rental
The team, consisting of Yehuda Koren, Robert Bell and Chris Volinsky, spent more than 2,000 combined hours poring through data to develop a method that improved upon Netflix's movie recommendations by about 8.5%.
The judging was done using a program that quantifies how well the recommendation systems predict which movies will be liked or disliked by a profiled consumer.
Because the AT&T trio did much of their Netflix work as part of their job assignment, the $50,000 award is being paid to their company, which plans to donate the money to charity.
Although his team is near the 10% target, Koren said he isn't sure the goal is reachable.
"Getting the first 5% (of improvement) is a lot easier than the last 5%," Koren said.
Even if they don't continue their work on the Netflix project, the AT&T research team plans to release their findings next week. Their insights conceivably could help other competitors in the contest to win the $1 million prize.
Netflix plans to blend some of the AT&T research team's suggested improvements into its movie-recommendation software early next year, said Jim Bennett, a vice president who oversees the system.
The current system draws upon about 2 billion movie ratings collected from the more than 10 million consumers who have subscribed to Netflix's service at some point during the past eight years.
Netflix ended September with about 7 million subscribers, giving the company a substantial lead over its nearest rival, Blockbuster, which has 3.1 million online customers.
Hoping to widen its lead in the online DVD rental market, Netflix last year dangled a $1 million reward to anyone who could improve upon the Los Gatos-based company's current movie-recommendation software by at least 10%.
The prize remains on the table, Netflix said Tuesday, for the more than 27,000 contestants from more than 160 countries who have entered the quirky coding contest so far.
To keep the programmers motivated, Netflix is handing out at least $50,000 annually to whoever has come closest to the 10% improvement.
Netflix will give its first "progress prize" next week to three researchers at an AT&T Inc. laboratory in Florham Park, N.J.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: AT DVD rental
The team, consisting of Yehuda Koren, Robert Bell and Chris Volinsky, spent more than 2,000 combined hours poring through data to develop a method that improved upon Netflix's movie recommendations by about 8.5%.
The judging was done using a program that quantifies how well the recommendation systems predict which movies will be liked or disliked by a profiled consumer.
Because the AT&T trio did much of their Netflix work as part of their job assignment, the $50,000 award is being paid to their company, which plans to donate the money to charity.
Although his team is near the 10% target, Koren said he isn't sure the goal is reachable.
"Getting the first 5% (of improvement) is a lot easier than the last 5%," Koren said.
Even if they don't continue their work on the Netflix project, the AT&T research team plans to release their findings next week. Their insights conceivably could help other competitors in the contest to win the $1 million prize.
Netflix plans to blend some of the AT&T research team's suggested improvements into its movie-recommendation software early next year, said Jim Bennett, a vice president who oversees the system.
The current system draws upon about 2 billion movie ratings collected from the more than 10 million consumers who have subscribed to Netflix's service at some point during the past eight years.
Netflix ended September with about 7 million subscribers, giving the company a substantial lead over its nearest rival, Blockbuster, which has 3.1 million online customers.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
IBM gets smart, buys Cognos for $5 billion cash
BOSTON — In hopes of keeping pace with rivals in the field of "business intelligence" software, IBM (IBM) said Monday it plans to buy Cognos (COGN) for $5 billion in cash.
The acquisition would follow similar moves this year. Software giant SAP recently linked up with Business Objects and Oracle grabbed Hyperion Solutions. Cognos shares had soared recently on expectations that it would be acquired.
However, the head of IBM's software group, Steve Mills, said acquiring Cognos — which already had a business partnership with IBM — was not inspired by the previous deals. IBM has been on an acquisition tear in recent years to build out its software portfolio and improve the company's profit margins.
"We never do acquisitions on defensive moves or based on what others are doing," Mills said in an interview.
IBM is offering to pay $58 a share in cash for Ottawa-based Cognos, a 9% premium over Cognos' $52.98 closing price Friday. Cognos was trading in the mid-$40s before SAP's $7 billion proposal for Business Objects was announced in October, accelerating expectations for consolidation in business-intelligence software.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: IBM SAP Business Objects Hyperion Solutions Cognos
Business-intelligence software helps big organizations gather and analyze data from across their organizations, whether for marketing, determining the financial impact of strategic decisions or making staffing changes.
IBM said Cognos' portfolio will fit its information management software division. Cognos CEO Rob Ashe is expected to remain and report to the group's head Ambuj Goyal, after the deal is completed in the first quarter 2008.
Cognos has 4,000 employees worldwide and serves more than 25,000 customers. It has U.S. headquarters in Burlington, Mass.
The acquisition would follow similar moves this year. Software giant SAP recently linked up with Business Objects and Oracle grabbed Hyperion Solutions. Cognos shares had soared recently on expectations that it would be acquired.
However, the head of IBM's software group, Steve Mills, said acquiring Cognos — which already had a business partnership with IBM — was not inspired by the previous deals. IBM has been on an acquisition tear in recent years to build out its software portfolio and improve the company's profit margins.
"We never do acquisitions on defensive moves or based on what others are doing," Mills said in an interview.
IBM is offering to pay $58 a share in cash for Ottawa-based Cognos, a 9% premium over Cognos' $52.98 closing price Friday. Cognos was trading in the mid-$40s before SAP's $7 billion proposal for Business Objects was announced in October, accelerating expectations for consolidation in business-intelligence software.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: IBM SAP Business Objects Hyperion Solutions Cognos
Business-intelligence software helps big organizations gather and analyze data from across their organizations, whether for marketing, determining the financial impact of strategic decisions or making staffing changes.
IBM said Cognos' portfolio will fit its information management software division. Cognos CEO Rob Ashe is expected to remain and report to the group's head Ambuj Goyal, after the deal is completed in the first quarter 2008.
Cognos has 4,000 employees worldwide and serves more than 25,000 customers. It has U.S. headquarters in Burlington, Mass.
Disney to launch cell service in Japan
TOKYO (AP) — Walt Disney and Softbank Corp. said Monday they would jointly offer mobile phone service in Japan starting next spring as "Disney Mobile."
Softbank, Japan's No. 3 carrier, and Walt Disney's Japan unit said in a joint news release they would cooperate on new handsets, mobile content, marketing and services.
"Disney brings its strong brand and legacy of developing great entertainment with broad appeal to our mutual venture," said Masayoshi Son, Softbank's chairman and CEO.
The company said details would be released later.
Disney is planning to lease Softbank's mobile network and use Softbank's stores to market phones and services, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Softbank, Japan's No. 3 carrier, and Walt Disney's Japan unit said in a joint news release they would cooperate on new handsets, mobile content, marketing and services.
"Disney brings its strong brand and legacy of developing great entertainment with broad appeal to our mutual venture," said Masayoshi Son, Softbank's chairman and CEO.
The company said details would be released later.
Disney is planning to lease Softbank's mobile network and use Softbank's stores to market phones and services, The Wall Street Journal reported.
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